ESP Biography

What does “Chinese” mean? Is it a language, a nationality, a race? If “Chinese” refers to the Mandarin language, then are Cantonese, or Shanghainese still Chinese languages? If Chinese is a nationality, what becomes of people who live outside the PRC? And if Chinese is a race, what are ethnic groups like Hui or Manchu? What does it mean to identify with an ethnolinguistic group like Minnan or Hokkien? This class will examine issues of ethnicity and transnationalism by looking at the political constructions of Chinese identity in various nation-states.

“Vampires, werewolves, and sex, oh my!” Where did the vampire come from? What are the cultural origins of the monsters in modern horror? And what sorts of spaces are available to monsters that come from traditions besides European folklore? In this class, we’ll look at the racialisation and gendering of the monstrous landscape in selected U.S. American works of fantasy fiction—the television series “Supernatural” and “The Vampire Diaries,” and the Neil Gaiman novel “American Gods.”

Places, peoples, languages—members of all these broad categories can fall under a single English word: Chinese. Are Cantonese and Hokkien dialects or languages? Are there multiple Chinese ethnicities? What makes a person “overseas Chinese?” Is there a Chinese diaspora? And how far must a person travel to stop being Chinese‽ This lecture will look at the historical and political processes of racial identity formation, and will address the ambiguity of the social constructs of “Chineseness.”