FASS Staff Profile

DR CHAN CHEOW THIA

DEPARTMENT of CHINESE STUDIES

Appointment:
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
Office:
AS8/05-23
Email:
chscct@nus.edu.sg
Tel:
65163901
Fax:
Homepage:
http://profile.nus.edu.sg/fass/chscct/
Tabs

Brief Introduction

Book Talks

Podcast Interview at New Books in East Asian Studies. February 10, 2024. https://newbooksnetwork.com/malaysian-crossings

Brilliant Time Bookstore (in Chinese), Taiwan. October 27, 2023. 

National Taiwan University (in Chinese), Taiwan. October 26, 2023.

National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan (in Chinese). October 25, 2023.

Tan Lark Sye Lecture Series (in Chinese), New Era University College, Malaysia. June 28, 2023. Online.

Modern East Asian Literature Research Cluster Seminar Series, Hong Kong University. May 4, 2023. Online.

Council on East Asian Studies Colloquium Series, Yale University. April 13, 2023.

"Sinophone Southeast Asian Crossings: A Symposium on Nanyang Culture, History, and Memory." Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University. April 6, 2023. Hybrid. 

Southeast Asia Seminar Series, Asian Institute at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto. April 4, 2023. 

Department of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia. March 30, 2023.

China Studies Centre, The University of Sydney. February 24, 2023. Online.

Yale-NUS Literature Programme Work-in-Progress Series. February 1, 2023.

Opening talk for the “Migrating Worlds: Rethinking Southeast Asia through Transnational Connections” Workshop, organized by the International PhD Program in Taiwan and Transcultural Studies at National Chung Hsing University (Taiwan), December 9, 2022. Online.

“World-Oriented Crossings: The Covert Globality of Mahua Literature.” Book Launch co-organized by the Department of Chinese Studies and the Singapore Research Nexus, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, NUS, National Library, Singapore, November 26, 2022. 

“Geography Lessons: Singapore, the 1990s and Wang Anyi’s Root-Seeking Journey to the South,” 大陸是飄浮的島嶼：新加坡、1990年代與王安憶南來尋根之旅的啓發. Lien Fung's Colloquium (in Chinese), Singapore Management University, October 29, 2022.

 

Personal Bio

Born and raised in Singapore, Chan Cheow Thia specializes in modern Chinese literature, with a focus on literary production related to Singapore and Malaysia from the nineteenth century to the present. Prior to doctoral studies, he was a Public Service Commission (PSC) Overseas Specialist Award recipient and taught at a secondary school. He was also engaged in developing Chinese language programmes as a national curriculum planner with the Ministry of Education (Singapore). In 2009, he left the shores of home to pursue his interest in modern Chinese literature. His intellectual sojourn took him to both sides of the Atlantic, where he explored the critical notion of “place” in diasporic Chinese literature, and later, in Singapore and Malaysian Chinese literature. From July 2016 to July 2018, he was a visiting postdoctoral fellow at the East Asia Program at Cornell University.

His doctoral dissertation won the Marston Anderson Prize for Distinguished Dissertation at the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale. His research received support from the NUS-Overseas Postdoctoral Fellowship, the NUS-Overseas Graduate Scholarship, the A. Bartlett. Giamatti Fellowship, and the Tan Kah Kee Postgraduate Scholarship. His monograph, Malaysian Crossings: Place and Language in the Worlding of Modern Chinese Literature (2022) is published by Columbia University Press. It uses Malaysian Chinese (Mahua) literature as a case study of inner diversities and connected histories to argue for understanding the globalization of modern Chinese literature from the cultural margins rather than from the centres. Extending his interests in examining the global in the local, he has started new work on popular Chinese culture in postwar Malaya and Singapore, and representations of the urban in postcolonial Singapore Chinese literature and film. 

BA          Fudan University (Chinese Language and Literature)
MPhil      University of Cambridge (Asian and Middle Eastern Studies)
PhD        Yale University (East Asian Languages and Literatures)

 


Teaching Areas

GEH1005  Crime Fiction and Film across Space & Time (in English) 跨越時空的犯罪小説與電影（英語授課）

CH2391     Strangers in Chinese Fiction and Film (in English)  華文文學和電影裡的他者與弱者（英語授課）

CH3225     Chinese Literature from Singapore and Malaysia 關鍵詞：新馬文學研究入門

CH4262     Transregional Chinese Literary Connections 新馬文學與跨域連結

CHC5342   Topics in Southeast Asian Chinese Literature and Film 東南亞華文文學與華語電影

 

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Research Interests

Modern Chinese Literature 中國現當代文學

Singapore and Malaysian Chinese Literature 新馬華文文學

Southeast Asian Chinese Studies 東南亞華人研究

Diaspora Studies 離散研究

Urban Studies 城市研究


Publications

BOOKS/MONOGRAPHS AUTHORED

  • Malaysian Crossings: Place and Language in the Worlding of Modern Chinese Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 2022). 320 pages.

ARTICLES IN JOURNALS

  • “Off-centre Articulations: Social Class, Postcolonial Singapore, and Re-orienting Sinophone Southeast Asian Literary Studies.” PRISM: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature 19, no. 2 (September 2022): 355-373.
  • “Conclusion: States of Convergence.” PRISM: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature 19, no. 2 (September 2022): 509-514.
  • "What is a 'Man from Greece?' The Micro-dialectics of Ethnicity in 1920s and 1930s British Malaya." SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, Vol. 33, no. 3 (2018): 536–575.
  • "Indigeneity, Map-mindedness and World-Literary Cartography: The Poetics and Politics of Li Yongping’s Transregional Chinese Literary Production." Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Vol. 30, no.1 (Spring 2018): 63-86.

SHORTER ARTICLES IN JOURNAL

  • “Introductory Note.” Special section on Transregional Singapore Chinese literature in Renditions: A Chinese-English Translation Magazine, no. 96 (Autumn 2021), 9-14. 

CHAPTERS IN BOOKS

  • “GoLi: The Moving Theatre.” In DramaBox: 30 Keywords, ed. Quah Sy Ren, 168-175. Singapore: Drama Box and Pagesetters Services, 2022 [In Chinese: 彈珠移動聚場.  《戲劇盒 30 關鍵詞》，ed. Quah Sy Ren 柯思仁, 164-171. Singapore: Drama Box and Pagesetters Services, 2022]
  • “In Search of Home and Country, Toward the Mutual Becoming of Place and Language: The Writing Practice of Pre-War II Author Lin Cantian” 何處覓家國，文地求相宜：戰前作家林參天的寫作實踐. In Literary Phenomena 2019: An Annual Collection of Lianhe Zaobao Literary Writings  2019年文字現象 ：聯合早報《文藝城》文選, ed. Yow Cheun Hoe游俊豪, 95-105. Singapore: Singapore Press Holdings Chinese Media Group, 2020.
  • “The Poet’s Hand That Sewed the Flag—The Generative Modality of the Central Trope in Wei Beihua’s ‘The Hand’” 縫製美麗的旗的詩人的手：談威北華《手》裏中心喻義的衍生與聯想. In Singapore Chinese Fiction: A Reader 備忘錄：新加坡華文小說讀本, ed. Quah Sy Ren 柯思仁 and Hee Wai Siam 許維賢, 50-52. Singapore: Nanyang Technological University Center for Chinese Language and Culture, 2016. [Reprinted in English in Memorandum: A Sinophone Singaporean Short Story Reader, ed. Quah Sy Ren and Hee Wai Siam, tr. Tan Dan Feng, 88-90. Singapore Ethos Books, 2020.] 

TRANSLATION WORK

  • Cai Xin. “If on an Island-State, an Old Man.” Renditions: A Chinese-English Translation Magazine (Autumn 2020): 123-137.
  • Lin Cantian. “The Man from Greece.” Renditions: A Chinese-English Translation Magazine (Spring 2019): 99-111

EDITORIAL WORK ON JOURNALS

  • Co-editor (with Carlos Rojas),“The Worlds of Southeast Asian Chinese Literature,” special issue of PRISM: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature 19, no. 2 (September 2022). 256 pages.
  • Guest Editor, “Transregional Singapore Chinese Literature,” special section in Renditions: A Chinese-English Translation Magazine, no. 96 (Autumn 2021), 9-44. https://www.cuhk.edu.hk/rct/toc/toc_b96.html.

BOOK REVIEWS

Other Information

Conference Proceedings

“The Fictional Deliverance of Others and its Limits: Reading the Anthologically-Embedded Representations of Strangers in Chia Joo Ming’s ‘Bon Voyage’” 小說“傳異”的限度：反思文學選集的他者再現與導讀取向. In Proceedings of “Diversity and Singapore Ethnic Chinese Communities” International Conference, ed. Koh Khee Heong 許齊雄, Ong Chang Woei 王昌偉 et. al, 95-103. Singapore: NUS Department of Chinese Studies and Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre, 2020.

Encyclopedia Entry

“Yu Dafu.” In The Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism. Ed. Stephen Ross. London: Routledge, 2016. DOI: 10.4324/9781135000356-REM142-1. 

Essays and Interviews

“In Search of Home and Country, Toward the Mutual Becoming of Place and Language: The Writing Practice of Pre-War II Author Lin Cantian” 何處覓家國，文地求相宜：戰前作家林參天的寫作實踐. In Lianhe Zaobao 聯合早報, May 21 2019.

“The Sand that is Our Island’s and the Sand that isn’t” 吾島及非吾島之沙. In Chao Foon 蕉風, no. 513 (2019): 132-133.

“Breaking Out across the Oceans and the Re-construction of Culture: Kuo Pao Kun’s Islandic Complex and Inter-Asia Imaginary” 越洋突圍與文化再造：郭寶崑的島國情結與亞際想像. In Fleurs des lettres字花, no. 78 (2019): 132-133.

“Reading/Experiencing Nanyang” 閱歷南洋 (2018)：https://www.zaobao.com.sg/byline/ceng-zhao-cheng. 

“It's Great to Know the Author, but Readers should Make Up their Own Minds: An Interview with Kho Tong Guan" 有幸知其人，讀者當自強：專訪許通元. In Kho Tong Guan, My Professor is a Terrorist 我的老師是恐怖份子. Taipei: Xinrui wenchuang, 2018. 172-198.

“Neighboring Places That can be Worlds Apart: Singapore-Malaysia Relations” 可以是咫尺，却也是天涯. In A Symphony of Our Voices 我的心声 你的回响. Eds. Quah Sy Ren 柯思仁and Danny Yeo 杨君伟. Singapore: Committee to Promote Chinese Language Learning, 2018. 94-99. Also at http://www.cpcll.sg/audio-book&func=view_article&aid=19.

“The Way We Were: Reminiscences of Maris Stella” 忆海星下课后的惬意日子. In Red Anthill 红蚂蚁. August 15, 2017. http://www.redants.sg/perspective/story20170815-162. 

 “We are What We Remember”: A Conversation with Singaporean Filmmaker Tan Pin Pin 反抗遗忘：陈彬彬访谈录. In Chao Foon 蕉风, no. 509 (2015): 122-128.

“Across the Ocean and on the Other Shore: Watching To Singapore with Love in New York” 飘洋与隔岸：《星国恋》纽约观后. In Chao Foon 蕉风, no. 508 (2014): 114-117.


Public Engagement

“Beyond Representations of Diversity: Vernacular Islands, Multiculturalism, and the Chinese Translation of Malay Sketches” 超越多樣性的呈現: 語文孤島、多元文化主義，以及《馬來素描》的中譯. Session chair for panel the 2021 Singapore Book Fair cum Lianhe Zaobao Literary Festival. June 5, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HF-NwQYvac

“Does Singapore Still Want to Play an Active Role in the Chinese-Speaking World?” 新加坡還想在華語世界扮演積極角色嗎？, op-ed by Lee Huay Leng, Editor in Chief, Chinese Media Group of SPH Media Limited, Lianhe Zaobao, January 7, 2023, response to my public talk at the Lien Fung's Colloquium (October 29, 2022). https://www.zaobao.com.sg/forum/views/story20230107-1350866.

“A Trip down the Historical Tunnel—Remembering Singapore’s Resplendent Moments in the Chinese-speaking World” 走入歷史隧道—追思新加坡在華語世界的璀璨時刻, op-ed by historian Lee Guan Kin, former director of the Center for Chinese Language, Culture, and Division of Chinese at Nanyang Technological University, Lianhe Zaobao, January 7, 2023, second response to my public talk at the Lien Fung's Colloquium (February 13, 2023). https://www.zaobao.com.sg/forum/views/story20230213-1362502

Participation in Singapore Writers Festival 2022, reported in:

Mentioned in “Teachers and Students of the only two Malay-medium Schools Publish Book to Preserve Collective Memory” 本地 “唯二”馬來文中學 師生集體記憶補白出書, Lianhe Zaobao, June 14, 2021, book review by Chen Yuxin, written after my remarks at 2021 Singapore Book Fair cum Lianhe Zaobao Literary Festival (June 5, 2021). https://www.zaobao.com.sg/lifestyle/culture/story20210614-1155829  

Rotating columnist for Singapore Chinese language broadsheet Lianhe Zaobao 聯合早報 January - December 2018 [Column title: “Reading/Experiencing Nanyang” 閱歷南洋] ：https://www.zaobao.com.sg/byline/ceng-zhao-cheng

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