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Please note that the below seminar is cancelled.

2019/2020 School of Chinese Seminar

Frankenstein in China: Liang Qichao and the Monstrous Sleeping Lion

Ari L. N. Heinrich 韓瑞 （UC San Diego）

November 28, 2019 (Thur); 1:30-3:00pm
Room 730, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU
Language: English

本演講探討科學怪人的怪物鮮為人知的在中國的來世。首先梳理科學怪人在中國的早期翻譯譜系（比瑪麗雪萊著名的《科學怪人》翻譯來得更早），聚焦過去兩個世紀怪物身體的再現的主要變化。在分析譜系時，也將追溯科學怪人的文化翻譯與19世紀末，因梁啟超等人而出名的中國作為「睡獅」的政治刻板印象之間，出人意料的關聯。此報告以本人2018年出版，探討生技年代的種族、美學、與作為商品的人體之專書Chinese Surplus: Biopolitical Aesthetics and the Medically Commodified Body的部分內容為基礎。

In this talk I explore the history of Frankenstein’s monster—in his little-known Chinese afterlife. Sketching out a genealogy of the early Chinese translation of the idea of Frankenstein (which actually preceded the translation of Mary Shelley’s famous book itself), I highlight major shifts in representations of the monstrous body over the last two centuries. Along the way, I trace the unexpected relationship between the cultural translation of Frankenstein and the late nineteenth-century political stereotype of China as a “sleeping lion” made famous by Liang Qichao and others. This talk is based on material from my latest book, Chinese Surplus: Biopolitical Aesthetics and the Medically Commodified Body (Duke UP, 2018), which explores race, aesthetics, and the human body as commodity in the age of biotech.

韓瑞為美國加州大學聖地牙哥分校中國與文化研究教授，著有The Afterlife of Images: Translating the Pathological Body Between China and the West (2008)， Chinese Surplus: Biopolitical Aesthetics and the Medically Commodified Body (2018)，也是台灣作家邱妙津《蒙馬特遺書》的英譯者。

Ari Larissa Heinrich is Professor of Chinese and Cultural Studies at UCSD. He is the author of The Afterlife of Images: Translating the Pathological Body Between China and the West (Duke UP, 2008) and Chinese Surplus: Biopolitical Aesthetics and the Medically Commodified Body (Duke UP, 2018), and the translator of Qiu Miaojin’s Last Words from Montmartre.

ALL ARE WELCOME!