Masterclass: Theorizing Sinophone Studies

Shu-mei Shih is the Irving and Jean Stone Endowed Chair of Humanities, with a joint appointment in the departments of Comparative Literature, Asian Languages and Cultures, and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.  She was the past president of the American Comparative Literature Association (2021-2022) and holds an honorary chair professorship at National Taiwan Normal University.  She is also currently a Yushan Fellow, awarded by the Ministry of Education in Taiwan.

Among other works, her 2007 book, Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations across the Pacific has been attributed as having inaugurated a new field of study called Sinophone Studies.  The book has been translated into Mandarin Chinese and Korean.  She works at the intersection of area studies, ethnic studies, and comparative literature, and has published a total of 3 monographs and 7 edited books, on topics ranging from transnationalism, critical theory, comparative racialization, indigenous knowledge, Taiwan studies, and Sinophone studies.  Her forthcoming titles include two volumes in Taiwan: Theorizing across Borders (跨界理論monograph), Theory Taiwan (理論台灣edited volume), and two volumes in the U.S: Sinophone Divergences (monograph) and Sinophone Studies across Disciplines (edited volume).