Academic Staff
Dr. ZHANG Yu
Associate Professor
Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature,film and cultural studies, Technology, Media, and Modern Chinese Culture(particularly telecommunication and transport studies), ChineseRevolutionary and Socialist Culture, TheCultural Politics of Representing Labor and Work in Modern China, Artisanal Aesthetics in Contemporary China, Finance and Literature, Spatial Crossing and Modern Chinese Cultural Experience
- HJ607
- +852 3400 8952
- emma.yu.zhang@polyu.edu.hk
SCOPUS IDBiography
Yu Zhang received her Ph.D. from the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Stanford University in 2014. Her first book Going to the Countryside: The Rural in Modern Chinese Cultural Imagination, 1915-1965 (2020) deals with the cultural representations and practices of “going to the countryside” between 1915 and 1965. As a critical response to the “urban turn” in the past few decades, this book brings the rural back to the central concern of Chinese cultural studies and argues that the rural has been constructed as a distinct modern experiential and aesthetic realm characterized by revolutionary changes in human conceptions and sentiments.
Currently, she is working on two book projects: 1) Wiring the Hearts: A Sentimental History of Phones in China: this project focuses on the cultural representations of various forms of “telephonic love/sentiment” from the early twentieth century to the 1990s as a prehistory to the age of the mobile phone and discusses the intersection of telecommunications, media, affect as well as materiality; 2) Post-Socialist Strivers and Their Discontents: The Culture of Work in Contemporary China: drawing from discourses in management, entrepreneurship, professionalism and craftsmanship, this project understands the formation of the new work culture as a new regime that produced new types of knowledge and disciplines and legitimized new forms of hierarchies, authorities and power relations and simultaneously sought ways to go beyond the Post-Socialist developmentalism.
Education and Academic Qualifications
- Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Cultures, Stanford University
Academic and Professional Experience
- Associate Professor, Department of Chinese History and Culture, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (2024. 7 –)
- Assistant Professor, Department of Chinese Culture, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (2018.11 – 2024.6)
Research Interests
Research Output
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2020 Going to the Countryside: The Rural in Modern Chinese Cultural Imagination, 1915-1965 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press)
[Reviewed by: Journal of Asian Studies [JAS], The China Quarterly, The China Journal, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture [MCLC], Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews [CLEAR] , Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature, Chinese Literature and Thought Today, The English Historical Review, International Comparative Literature 《國際比較文學（中英文）》]
- 2024 “The Cult of Craftsmanship in China: The Industrial Hand and the Artisanal Hand in the Age of High Technology,” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture (MCLC), June 2024, vo. 36, No. 1: pp. 151-180.
- 2024 “A Collective Fantasia of the Financial Age in Early 1990s China: Erotic-Speculative Sensation, Neoliberal Labor Heroine, and Presentist Worldly Wisdom,” Positions: Asia Critique, August 2024, vol. 32, Issue 3, pp. 573–600.
- 2020 “The Discourse of ‘Patience’ and the Rural Revolutionary Narrative of Yan’an: Rereading Ding Ling’s In the Hospital,” (“耐心”的話語与延安的鄉土革命敘事——重讀丁玲的《在醫院中》), Journal of Modern Chinese Literature (現代中文學刊), Issue 4. Reprinted in Ding Ling Studies (丁玲研究), Issue 1, 2021. http://www.dingling.org.cn/news/649.html
- 2018 “Enchanting a World of Crafts: Handmade and Homemade Things, Affective Labor, and Orality in The Road Home (1999),” Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Vol. 12, No. 1, 2018 (on-line first, September 2016), 1-19.
- 2017 “Socialist Builders on the Rails and Road: Industrialization, Mobility, and National Imagination in Chinese Socialist Films, 1949-1965,” Twentieth-Century China 42, No. 3, October 2017, 255–273.
- 2013 “Visual and Theatrical Constructs of a Modern Life in the Countryside: James Yen, Xiong Foxi, and the Rural Reconstruction Movement in Ding County (1920s-1930s).” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, 25, 1 (spring): 47-95.
- 2010 “Garden: Remembrance and Revolutionary Gesture in Ba Jin’s Family” (花园：往事追忆与革命姿态—重读巴金的《家》), Modern Chinese Literary Studies (《中国现代文学研究丛刊》). 3, 119-131 (in Chinese)
- 2023 Review of Shakespeare and East Asia by Alexa Alice Joubin, Oxford University Press, 2021. Modern Chinese Literature and Culture.
- 2022 Review of Utopian Ruins: A Memorial Museum of the Mao Era by Jie Li. Durham: Duke University Press, 2020. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. December. Pp. 162-167
- 2021 Review of Urban Horror: Neoliberal Post-Socialism and the Limits of Visuality by Erin Y. Huang. Journal of Asian Studies. Durham: Duke University Press. 2020. 1064-1065.
- 2019 Review of Revolutionary Waves: The Crowd in Modern China by Tie Xiao Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2017. Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature (no. 1), 2019. 208-210.
- 2017 Review of Visions of Dystopia in China’s New Historical Novels by Jeffrey C. Kinkley. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. Chinese Literature Today 6:1, 138-139.
- 2021 《禁忌與真相：從〈西江月〉到〈白鴿木蘭〉》(“Taboo and Truth: from Western Moon River to White Dove and Lily Magnolia,” Shanghai Review of Books. July 17. https://m.thepaper.cn/api_prom.jsp?contid=13625135&from=
- 2018 “Postsocialism and Its Narratives: An Interview with Cai Xiang” (co-interviewed and co-translated with Calvin Hui), MCLC Resource Center Publication (on-line) （中文版《重建开放的文学理解——蔡翔访谈录》發表於《現代中文學刊》2019年第4期）https://u.osu.edu/mclc/online-series/zhang-hui/
- 2022-2025 General Research Fund, Research Grants Council, H.K.S.A.R., awarded for a three-year project entitled “China at Work: Revolutionizing the Culture of Work and the Post-Mao Chinese Cultural Imaginaries”
- 2019-2022 University’s Start-up Fund for New Recruits, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
- 2016-2017 Chiang Ching Kuo Foundation Junior Scholar Grant
- 2013-2014 Chiang Ching Kuo Foundation Doctoral Fellowship
- 2013-2014 Stanford Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI) China Studies Dissertation Grant
- 2012—2013 Mabelle McLeod Lewis Memorial Fund for Grants in Aid of Scholarly Work
- 2012—2013 Stanford Humanities Center Melon Foundation Fellowship (declined)
- 2012—2013 Stanford University Kwoks Fellowship (declined)
- 2009—2013 Stanford University Center for East Asian Studies Summer Fellowship
- 2007—2012 Stanford University Fellowship
- 2005 UC Santa Barbara Kenneth Pai Fellowship
- 2004 UC Santa Barbara Small Department Regent’s Fellowship
- 2004 UC Santa Barbara Consortium for Literature, Theory, and Culture Scholar’s Award
- 2004 Hong Kong Baptist University LEWI Resident Graduate Scholarship
- 2024 Urban Sensualities Across the Strait: Emotions, Technologies, and Politics,” The Association of Chinese and Comparative Literature (ACCL) Biennial Conference, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, June 23-25 (panel co-organizer)
- 2023 “Sensing the Body: On Touch from Late Imperial to Contemporary China” Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Conference, Boston, March 16-19 (panel co-organizer)
- 2020 “Representing Work in Contemporary China”, AAS-in-Asia 2020, Kobe, Japan, August 31- September 1, 2020 (panel withdrawn due to the Covid-19)
- 2015 “Labor, Body, Technology: Forging Chinese Socialist Modernity at the. Intersection of Human and Machine,” Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Conference, Chicago, March 26-29
- 2014 "Culturing Industry, Industrializing Everyday Life in Maoist China" Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Conference, Philadelphia, PA, March 27-30 (panel co-organizer)
- 2024 “How to Talk about Love Efficiently: Telephonic Sensualities, Investment and Erotics in the Republican Chinese Urban Contexts,” The Association of Chinese and Comparative Literature (ACCL) Biennial Conference, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, June 23-25
- 2024 “Telecommunications and the Transnational World of Leftist Internationalism,” Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Conference, Seattle, WA, March 14-17
- 2023 “The Cult of Craftsmanship in Contemporary China,” Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Conference, Boston, March 16-19
- 2021 “Educating the ‘Careless’ Socialist Child: Professionalizing Childhood in the Maoist and Early Post-Mao Years,” The Inaugural Conference of the Association for Chinese Animation Studies, Zoom Webinar, March 1-May 12
- 2021 “The Socialist/Neoliberal Labor Hero in the Risky World of Finance: “Leung Fung-Yee Fever,” the Financialization of Everyday Life, and the Formation of Entrepreneurial Subjectivity,” Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Conference (on-line), March 21-26.
- 2019 “Industrializing the Chinese Countryside in Representational and Aesthetic Forms: A Socialist Fantasia of Human Creativity,” paper presented at symposium of “Conjuring the Socialist Rural: Locality, Economy, and Imagination of Village Life in 1950s China,” The Chinese University of Hong Kong, May 16–18, 2019.
- 2016 “Revolutionary Journeys to Yan’an: The Politics of Patience,” Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Conference, Seattle, March 31-April 6
- 2015 “Socialist Builders on the Road: Industrialization, Mobility, and National Imagination in Chinese Socialist Films (1949-1965),” Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Conference, Chicago, March 26-29
- 2014 “A Handmade and Homemade Industry in the Socialist Films The Young People in Our Village and its sequel,” Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Conference, Philadelphia, PA, March 27-30
Esteem Measures
2020 Going to the Countryside: The Rural in Modern Chinese Cultural Imagination, 1915-1965 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press)
