By Audrey Lin
Howard Chiang, professor of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at UC Santa Barbara, has dedicated his career to promoting Sinophone studies and uplifting emerging academics in this constantly expanding sphere. The term “Sinophone” refers to Sinitic languages and cultures that go beyond China to include Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and overseas Chinese-speaking communities.
Howard Chiang, Lai Ho and Wu Cho-liu Endowed Chair in Taiwan Studies and professor of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at UC Santa Barbara.
Chiang, who directs UCSB’s Center for Taiwan Studies, co-edited “Sinophone Studies Across Disciplines: A Reader” together with literary scholar Shu-mei Shih, which was published this fall. It compiles essays by academics that showcase the interdisciplinary potential of Sinophone studies as a nexus for marginalized global topics.
Chiang sat down to answer a few questions on the collection and Sinophone studies at UCSB. This interview has been edited for length.
Q: The concept of the “Sinophone” is relatively new. Can you define Sinophone studies for people who may not be familiar with the field?
A: Different scholars use different definitions. For me, I like to promote a broad but critical definition of the term, thinking about its analytical purpose. Broadly speaking, I think of Sinophone studies as the study of Sinitic-language communities and cultures around the world, especially cultures outside of China or on the margins of China and Chineseness. It is very imperative that we distinguish “Sinophone” from China or Chinese culture.
Q: What about Sinophone studies is so uniquely interdisciplinary?
Shu-mei Shih, the Irving and Jean Stone Chair in Humanities and professor of Comparative Literature, Asian Languages and Cultures, and Asian American Studies at UCLA. She co-edited “Sinophone Studies Across Disciplines: A Reader.”
A: The field of Sinophone studies was coined by the literary scholar Shu-mei Shih at UCLA, my co-editor of the volume. She wrote a book called “Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations across the Pacific,” published in 2007. Before that, she wrote an article where the concept was used analytically in 2004. So, from the very beginning, the concept was promoted by literary scholars like Shu-mei who wanted to think about the role of Sinophone literature in world literature.
First off, they were modeling the concept of “Sinophone” after the “Francophone” and “Anglophone” ideas. It was first promoted by Shu-mei to think about world literature from the Sinophone lens, but even when she was theoretically building the construct, she was relying quite a bit on history to do the theory-building.
In the first volume, “Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader (2013),” she talks about different historical processes that contributed to the formation of Sinophone communities around the world. One was continental colonialism, the way China acquired some of its borderland regions such as Tibet, Xinjiang, and Mongolia into the People’s Republic of China empire today.
The second was migration, so thinking about Sinophone subjects who have migrated to Southeast Asia or Asian America for example. They are using Sinitic language and script to express themselves. Instead of calling that outright “Chinese,” she uses the term Sinophone.
The third historical pillar was settler colonialism, to think about Han Chinese settler colonialism in Taiwan and why that was important in the shaping of Sinophone communities there.
“Sinophone Studies Across Disciplines: A Reader” compiles essays that showcase the interdisciplinary potential of Sinophone studies as a nexus for marginalized global topics.
From the very beginning, Sinophone studies was already looking to a discipline like history in addition to literature to do its theory-building. From the get-go, it was already interdisciplinary. There are a lot of points of convergence. Sinophone studies offers [those in other disciplines] a conceptualization of power and empire to understand why the people or cultures or regions they study tend to be marginalized by traditional area studies disciplines. Scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds including history, musicology, dance studies, film studies, and many more, all came to be interested in Sinophone studies. The volume is a testament to the interdisciplinary maturation of Sinophone studies.
Q: Can you tell me the origin story of this book?
A: Actually, it was a conference hosted by Shu-mei at UCLA. [Presenters] went through a screening process. She invited the majority of authors to contribute to this volume and she invited me to be co-editor. At the end of that conference, we decided to launch the Society of Sinophone Studies and I was nominated to serve as founding chair. We come from different disciplinary backgrounds. I am a historian and she is a literary scholar, so that was rather natural for us to work together. Our intellectual orientation is very similar.
Q: How do you see the field of Sinophone studies expanding at UCSB in the next few years? How can it be distinguished from China studies?
A: To be honest, one of the reasons why I accepted this position at UCSB was because I saw an opportunity to promote Taiwan studies but also Sinophone studies. Just to promote Taiwan studies, you find yourself in a marginalized position, so Sinophone studies elevates its scholarly significance a little bit. That is where I think there is a lot of potential — to do Taiwan and Sinophone studies together.
UCSB’s Howard Chiang joined HFA student intern Audrey Lin for an interview on Sinophone studies and the newly published reader he co-edited with literary scholar Shu-mei Shih.
At UCSB, as you know, we have a Center for Taiwan Studies that I direct. For the next five years, the overall theme of the center is “Taiwan in a relational world.” [The annual theme] this year is Taiwan and Asian America, but for each of the following years I would like to devote the annual theme to think about Taiwan’s relation to one region of the world or some form of relationality.
We have an Interdisciplinary Humanities Center research focus group on interdisciplinary Sinophone studies and we will be organizing activities around that. [In the next two years,] I am hoping to organize a conference on the future of Sinophone Taiwan. I have also proposed a new course on Sinophone studies in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies. In the future, I do see UCSB as a very prominent site for the study and development of Sinophone studies.
Audrey Lin is a second-year Writing & Literature major at UC Santa Barbara. They are a Web and Social Media intern with the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.