Affective Experiences and Creative Practices of Queer Women from Sinophone Societies: Moving Towards Europe and Beyond

• Applicant: Yiran Wang, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology ; General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies ; Asian Studies
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 528246152

This project aims to analyse the affective experiences and creative practices of queer women moving from Sinophone societies to Europe, and beyond, in historical and contemporary contexts. Through a transnational perspective and with an interdisciplinary methodology traversing anthropology, literary studies and cultural studies, the project consists of three work packages. The first work package empirically investigates how the queer women moving from Sinophone societies (mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and/or other Chinese-speaking communities) to Europe express and record their embodied experiences, emotional journeys and affective relations through creative practices. The second work package looks into the literary works of two Taiwanese female authors who auto/biographically depicted queer women’s transnational mobilities towards Europe and beyond, and maps the affective assemblages and temporal-spatial entanglements created by these life writings. The third work package revisits the bonded lives and mutually-inspired literary and artistic practices of a bunch of feminist forerunners active in early- and mid-20th-Century China, some of whom travelled to Japan, Europe and/or North America, and queers the well-established nationalist, feminist and popular discourses that adopt the images and works of these women in contesting but equally heteronormative tones.

• DFG Programme: WBP Position