
Dr Shuangyi Li
PhD, MSc, MA
Expertise
Current positions
Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature and Cultures
Department of French
Contact
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Biography
From 2017-19, I worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in French and Comparative Literature at Lund University, Sweden. I was then awarded a 3-year research grant by the Swedish Research Council/Vetenskapsrådet (2019-2021) for my project on French-Chinese literature and visual arts. I've also trained to teach Chinese as a foreign/second language at Beijing Language and Culture University 北京语言大学 (2019-2020).
My first monograph Proust, China and Intertextual Engagement: Translation and Transcultural Dialogue (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) won the International Comparative Literature Association Anna Balakian Book Prize (2019), for the best first book in the field of Comparative Literature published in the last three years by a scholar under the age of forty. I've recently published my second monograph, titled Travel, Translation and Transmedia Aesthetics: Franco-Chinese Literature and Visual Arts in a Global Age (Palgrave Macmillan 2021), which explores the literary and artistic works by four first-generation Chinese migrant writer-artists in France. It was shortlisted for the R. Gapper Book Prize for the best book in French Studies published in 2022 hosted by the Society for French Studies.
I have proficiency in Chinese (Mandarin), English, and French, with a good reading knowledge of Swedish, and can be contacted in these languages.
Research interests
I'm broadly interested in global modernism(s), transcultural/translingual/exophone writings, international canon-formation, reception studies, literary and semiotic translation, travel writings, literary exoticism, intermediality mainly from literary perspectives (word, image, and sound), and critical models of world and comparative literature.
I have worked extensively on Marcel Proust, Victor Segalen, contemporary Chinese and Chinese diasporic writers and visual artists (painters, calligraphers, and filmmakers), such as YU Hua, WANG Xiaobo, WEI Hui, François CHENG, DAI Sijie, SHAN Sa, GAO Xingjian. This can be seen from my two monographs. I've also edited a special issue with Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/Revue canadienne de littérature comparée 47.4 (2020), titled 'Cultural Resonance and the Echo Chamber of Reading', which calls for a rethinking of literary critical models from the perspective of sound.
More recently, I've become interested in Chinese/sinophone and anglophone/francophone African writers' mutual creative engagement.
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
Travel, Translation and Translingualism: Franco-Chinese Novels and Visual Arts in the Global Age
Principal Investigator
Description
My current research project examines the works of four contemporary first-generation Chinese migrant writer-artists in France: François CHENG 程抱一, DAI Sijie 戴思杰, SHAN Sa 山飒, and GAO Xingjian 高行健. They…Managing organisational unit
School of Modern LanguagesDates
01/01/2019 to 31/12/2021
Publications
Selected publications
01/07/2021Travel, Translation and Transmedia Aesthetics
Travel, Translation and Transmedia Aesthetics
Proust, China and Intertextual Engagement
Proust, China and Intertextual Engagement
Introduction
Canadian Review of Comparative Literature / Revue canadienne de littérature comparée
Recent publications
01/01/2022Vernacular Imagination and Exophone Reconfiguration in Francophone Chinese Diasporic Literature
Vernaculars in an Age of World Literatures
A “Spiritual Journey” Through the “Middle” Kingdom: Travel and Translation in François Cheng’s Translingual Novel
Narratives Crossing Borders
(Sino)graphs in Franco(n)texts
Multilingual Literature as World Literature
Transcending Exoticism? Sound and Voice in Dai Sijie and François Cheng
Sounds Senses
Book review: Translation and Literature in East Asia: Between Visibility and Invisibility
Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies
Teaching
- FREN10008 Shaping France (BA Year 1);
- FREN10011 Global French (BA Year 1);
- FREN30001 + FREN30116 French Language 3 (BA Year 4, Translation)
- MODL10016 What is comparative literature and how do we practise it? (BA Year 1);
- MODLM10018 Introduction to Visual Cultures (BA Year 1);
- MODLM0005 Theories of Translation (MA in Chinese-English Translation);
- MODLM2034 Tradition and Experimentation in Twentieth-Century European Fiction (MA Comp Lit & Cultures);
- MODLM0050 Contemporary Global Chinese Literature and Visual Arts (MA Comp Lit & Cultures);
With Prof. Ulrike Maude in English, I'm currently co-supervising a PhD project on European Modernism (literature & painting).
With Dr Carol O'Sullivan, I'm currently co-supervising a PhD project on the English translation and reception of Chinese martial arts novels.