The Alice Paul Center for Research on Gender, Sexuality, & Women: The Program in Comparative Literature presents a Theorizing Workshop

"Comparative Literature and the Question of China."

Speaker: David Eng, Professor of English and Asian American Studies, University of Pennsylvania

In this informal workshop, we will use Professor Eng’s recently co-edited Social Text double issue, "China and the Human," to discuss the problem of comparison in the discipline of comparative literature. Starting with the premise that the act of comparison creates its objects, we will consider how this dynamic functions in studies between the West and non-West.  How might critical attention to "China" help undo the epistemological consistency of liberal humanism--and the liberal human subject--as the implicit grounding for much of our work on modernity?  Indeed, what are valid grounds for comparison?

Lunch is included. Free and open to the public.

Sponsored by the Department of English, the Asian American Studies Program, and the Program in Comparative Literature.