Feng GUO

Thesis title: Reinventing the Frontier: the Northwest in Modern Chinese Media (1931-1945)

Biography

Background

PhD candidate in Chinese Studies at the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures. I obtained an MA in Chinese Culture with Distinction and then an MPhil degree from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Before pursuing my PhD at Edinburgh, I worked as Teaching Assistant and Research Assistant at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and then the University of Hong Kong, participating in a wide range of teaching and research projects on Chinese history, literature, and culture. I am working on my PhD project tentatively entitled "Reinventing the Frontier: the Northwest in Modern Chinese Mass Media (1931-1945)," which has been awarded grants and scholarships from European Association for Chinese Studies, Lo Chia-luen International Sinology Chair, and Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation.

Qualifications

PhD candidate, the University of Edinburgh

Master of Philosophy, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Thesis: Taipei in Post-Martial Law Taiwanese Fiction

Master of Arts in Chinese Culture (Distinction), the Hong Kong Polytechnic University 

Bachelor of Management, Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics

Research summary

My research interests lie in two aspects:

1. Chinese literature, visual culture, and print media from the late Qing to the Republican era (late 19th-century to 1949). Viewing from a cultural history perspective, I am enthusiastic in exploring intricate relationships between cultural production and socio-political transformation in Republican China.

2. Travel narratives and landscape representations in modern China and Sinophone areas.

Current research interests

Print culture of Republican China; Frontier history of modern China; Travel culture in Sinophone area

Past research interests

My past research focused on the urban imagination in contemporary Taiwanese fiction, Taiwan nativist literature (xiangtu wenxue) in the 1970s, and Hong Kong fiction.

Conference details

  • “Redrawing National Landscape: The Northwest in Wartime Chinese Paintings.” “Land in China: the Sixteenth Graduate Seminar on Modern and Contemporary China,” Hong Kong: the Chinese University of Hong Kong, 4-5 Jan. 2024.
  • “Reconstructing the Origin of Chinese National Culture: Art-Archaeology and Exhibitions on the Northwest Cultural Relics (1930s-1940s).” “International Young Scholar Workshop on Modern Chinese Literature,” Taipei: National Taiwan University, 19 Dec. 2023.
  • "Capturing the 'Internal Others': the Northwest Non-Han Ethnicities in Republican Chinese Photography." The British Association for Chinese Studies Annual Conference (BACS), Oxford University, 31 Aug - 1 Sep 2022.
  • "Tourism, Patriotism, and Transnational Modernity: Nanyang/Southeast Asia in China Traveler during the Republican Period." Literature and the Sea: the Association of Chinese and Comparative Literature Biennial Conference (ACCL), online/National Taiwan University, 20-22 June 2022.
  • “Rediscovering the 'Internal Others': the Northwest Photography in Republican Chinese Media.” Photo Workshop: Photography as Knowledge (Re-)Production in Twentieth-Century East Asia, online/Heidelberg University, Germany, 17-19 Feb. 2022.
  • “Wartime Hong Kong in the Writings of Mainland Chinese Intellectuals (1937-1941).” On the Road: The Second International Conference on Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 28-29 December 2019.
  • “Writing Trauma in Post-Martial Law Taiwan: Memories of Taipei in Night of Riddles in a Dark Alley and Kamen in Taiwan.” The Fifth Session of the Two Sides Students Forum, Parallel Session in Literature, Xiamen: Xiamen University, 26-28 June 2018.
  • “‘Wavelets’: Tea Restaurants (cha chaan teng) in Hong Kong Literature at the End of 20th Century.” “Hong Kong Keywords” workshop, Hong Kong: The University of Hong Kong, 24 June 2017.
  • “‘Chilsu and Mansu’: A Transultural Film Adaptation of Huang Chun-ming’s Short Story.” International Conference on “Huang Chun-ming and His Literature,” Yilan (Ilan), Taiwan: National Ilan University, 16-17 October 2015.

Invited speaker

  • Invited talk, “Redrawing the Frontier: Ethnographical Photography and Landscape Paintings in China’s Northwest during the 1930s-1940s.” Taipei: National Chengchi University, 29 November 2023.

Organiser

Chinese Studies PhD Work-in-progress Workshop, the University of Edinburgh/Zoom, 25 June, 2021.

Papers delivered

Publications:

1.  “Taipei Narration from the New Generation of Urban Immigrants: A Study of Zhong Wenyin’s Lonely River and Wu Mingyi’s The Magician on the Skywalk.” Studies in Chinese Literature, issue 47 (2019): 151-179.

DOI： 10.29419/SICL.201902_(47).0005 

2. “‘Chilsu and Mansu’: A Transcultural Film Adaptation of Huang Chunming’s Two Painters,” in Li Rui-teng, ed. Ting Shuo Du Xie Huang Chun-ming. Yilan: Yilan County Cultural Affairs Bureau, 2016.

Translation:

(English to Chinese) 探究創傷、內疚和情感的譜系. Ruth Leys Marlene Goldman, “Navigating the Genealogies of Trauma, Guilt, and Affect: An Interview with Ruth Leys.” International Aesthetics 外國美學 Vol.39, pp. 207-232.

This article was published on