UC Irvine

The challenge for contemporary literary scholars comes down to the question of how useful a cultural product is in describing and configuring the contemporary cultural scene, for example, the impact of literature, film, and TV in the globalizing era. Many scholars, in order to capture this diversified post-socialist cultural phenomenon, explore as many genres of art as they can in their research. However, identifying the common feature of post-socialist diversity in China still remains a question without answer. My research focuses on the theme of youth narratives in order to provide a solid and concrete perspective to assess contemporary Chinese culture and society.

My research is motivated by a cultural phenomenon that I observe in contemporary China, namely the prevalence of youth narratives in fiction, film, and popular culture. The youth narrative has been frequently intertwined with China’s pursuit of modernity and its nation-building projects under different political and cultural ideologies. My research traces the emergence and evolution of youth narratives in modern Chinese literature and then delves into various recurring themes and motifs about youth in literature, film, and TV from the 1990s to 2010, to discuss the cultural, social and political significances of youth narratives in contemporary China in order to capture common and critical features of diverse post-socialist status and engage with the furious debate on post-socialism and globalization in the Chinese context. What is more, my study reveals conflict between elitist state discourse and civil discourse implied by youth narratives from the 1990s to the present. This period provides rich textual and visual materials that showcases the most heatedly-discussed phenomena in China and resonates with classic dilemmas and ambivalences of Chinese modernity. Moreover, each of these phenomena relates to drastic economic change and social transition during the contemporary period. In a nutshell, these texts do not only reflect the moment but are also part of the moment. Hence, my research of contemporary Chinese culture links the past, present, and future; and is located at the intersection of historical and cultural studies, providing both diachronic and synchronic visions of key issues such as modernity, nationalism, and globalization.