Yanbing Er
Literary Anticipations of Sexual Difference: Explorations in Women's Writing 1980-2014
- PhD in English Literature
- School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures
Contact details
- Email: s1220314@sms.ed.ac.uk
Background
Yanbing is originally from Singapore where she graduated with a first-class BA Honours degree in English Literature from Nanyang Technological University in 2011. She obtained a distinction in an MSc by Research in Critical Theory from the University of Edinburgh in 2013, and began her PhD in English Literature in the same year. Yanbing’s doctoral project is jointly supervised by Dr Carole Jones and Dr Sarah Dunnigan, and is funded by a University of Edinburgh LLC PhD Scholarship award.
Qualifications
Education
- 2013: MSc in Critical Theory (With Distinction)
- 2011: BA (Honours) in English Literature (First Class)
Awards and grants
- 2016: Duke University Feminist Theory Workshop International Travel Award
- 2015: University of Edinburgh Principal’s Teaching Award Scheme (with Muireann Crowley)
- 2014: Foundation Scotland Fran Trust Award
- 2014: University of Edinburgh Principal’s Go Abroad Fund
- 2013 - 2016: University of Edinburgh LLC PhD Scholarship
- 2012: University of Edinburgh Global Masters Scholarship
Responsibilities & affiliations
Yanbing served as co-editor and treasurer for FORUM: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture & the Arts in 2014/15, and co-edited Issue 19 under the theme ‘The New Materialisms’ (Autumn 2014), and Issue 20 under the theme ‘After the Good Life (Spring 2015). She had previously acted as a peer reviewer and article editor for the journal. She is the third year representative for the English Literature Staff-Student Liaison Committee (SSLC) in the 2015/16 year, having also served in the two years before. Yanbing has read for the James Tait Black Prize.
Undergraduate teaching
English Literature 1
Research summary
Yanbing’s dissertation examines the poetics of sexual difference as grounded in Continental feminist philosophy, and the ways in which it can be articulated in the imaginative space of fiction. The project explores aesthetic representations of the feminine in several novels of contemporary women writers, and how this can be aligned to the larger project of feminist academic criticism and the future(s) of feminist theory.
Her other research interests include critical theory with a focus on feminist theory and philosophy. She works broadly in the field of contemporary literature.
Project activity
In 2015/16, Yanbing, together with Muireann Crowley, organised and led an initiative entitled ‘Theories and Textual Practices’, which was funded by a Principal’s Teaching Award Scheme (PTAS) at the University of Edinburgh. The project involved the development of a structured, peer-led series of seminars catered to postgraduate research students in the LLC working on critical and cultural theory. These seminars were held in early Spring 2016, and complemented existing research methods training provided by the LLC.
- “In Search of Self: The Dysfunctional Feminism of Charlotte Roche’s Wetlands.” Women: A Cultural Review 26.4 (2015): 443-61.
- “Editorial Introduction: The New Materialisms.” Forum Postgraduate Journal of Culture and the Arts. Issue 19 (Autumn 2014)
- ‘“Breath against breath”: Exploring the Confessional Impulse in Elena Ferrante’s The Days of Abandonment.’ Legacies and Lifespans: Contemporary Women’s Writing Association Conference. University of Brighton. October 2015.
- ‘“We are and we are not our bodies”: Corporeal temporalities in Jeanette Winterson’s Gut Symmetries.’ Topologies of Sexual Difference. Luce Irigaray Circle Conference. RMIT Australia. December 2014.
- ‘Uncanny embodiment and the fragmentation of language in Ali Smith’s Hotel World.’ Textual Embodiment: Literature, the Body and Psychoanalysis. Goldsmiths Literature Seminar Postgraduate Conference. Goldsmiths University of London. August 2014.
- ‘“A tightrope between two worlds”: Mapping the Impasse of Feminism and Postmodernism in Jeanette Winterson’s The PowerBook.’ Ethnographies of Gender and the Body. Netherlands Association for Gender Studies and Feminist Anthropology (LOVA) International Conference. Vrije Universiteit. July 2014.
- ‘In Search of Self: A Body Language of Ambivalence in Charlotte Rocheʼs Wetlands.’ Body Projects: Body Modification and the Female Body Interdisciplinary Conference. University of York. March 2013.