From Xiao Jianqing, Manhua Shanghai (1936)

Friday, May 1, 3:00-5:00PM in CEAS 319 (1155 E 60th St)
Adhira Mangalagiri (PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature, University of Chicago)
Slave of the Colonizer: Reading the Indian Literary Figure in Chinese Literature”

This Friday at 3:00PM, please join the Art and Politics of East Asia Workshop for a presentation by Adhira Mangalagiri, PhD candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature, on representations of colonial Indian policemen in Chinese literature written between 1900 and 1940. The Indian policeman is persistently present in China’s, particularly Shanghai’s, literary production during the colonial period. However, this Indian figure has so far been treated as a historical figure, his function in literary texts often explained merely by accounting for the historical forces underlying his presence on the streets of Shanghai. Using postcolonial and psychoanalytic lineages of critical thought, Adhira argues that the Indian policeman is not simply a historical artifact lurking in the backgrounds of texts. Rather, she argues that he is a central feature of the Chinese literary psyche and is crucial for reading colonial anxieties in the short stories and novels of the period.

A draft of the chapter is available at this link. If you have not received the password for the post, please feel free to contact Nicholas Lambrecht at lambrecht at uchicago.edu. Light refreshments will be served at the workshop. We look forward to seeing you on Friday!

lambrecht