China and Inner Asia

B-V53: Literary Celebrities and Media Ecologies in Modern China

Virtual Organizer(s)

• 

  Renren Yang

  University of British Columbia, Canada

Virtual Chair(s)

• 

  Michel Hockx

  University of Notre Dame, United States

Virtual Paper Presenter(s)

• EC

  Eileen Cheng-yin Chow

  Duke University, United States
• 

  Renren Yang

  University of British Columbia, Canada
• SG

  Shaohua Guo

  Carleton College, United States
• SK

  Sabina Knight

  Smith College, United States

Virtual Discussant(s)

• 

  Michel Hockx

  University of Notre Dame, United States

Session Abstract: The celebrity status of a writer is often attributed to the merits and impact of their literary works. However, shifts in the media ecologies of literary production, circulation, and consumption not only afford different venues and opportunities for writers to receive public recognition, but also shape the style, manner, and substance of their celebrity authorship. This panel investigates the changing roles media technologies, practices, and institutions play in the making and unmaking of Chinese literary celebrities throughout the twentieth century with corresponding aesthetic, social, and political implications. Exploring how famous writers engage with mass/social media in their textual and extra-textual creations and how media processes/events promote (or fail to promote) the visibility of particular writers, the papers shed new light on the fraught author-media-fame relationship in modern China. Eileen Cheng-yin Chow’s paper addresses celebrity branding through the Republican-era bestselling author Zhang Henshui and the intimate parasociality his fans felt for him. Renren Yang explores the literary model of Zhao Shuli through the performative media in the socialist period. Sabina Knight looks at media controversies surrounding Mo Yan to consider contemporary fiction’s room for maneuver. Finally, Shaohua Guo examines the cross-fertilization of the Wechat platform and Huang Tongtong’s literary works. Our discussant is Michel Hockx, whose research has covered literary practices and institutions throughout twentieth-century China. In sum, the panel complicates the politics of literary recognition by questioning what constitutes the historically contingent media ecologies of our reading and writing.

Presentations:

• Mediated Intimacies: “My True Friend” Zhang Henshui
  

  Virtual Paper Presenter: Eileen Cheng-yin Chow – Duke University
• Emulative Performance and Precarious Fame: The Socialist Literary Model of Zhao Shuli
  

  Virtual Paper Presenter: Renren Yang – University of British Columbia
• Writing in the Age of WeChat: A Case Study of Huang Tongtong
  

  Virtual Paper Presenter: Shaohua Guo – Carleton College
• Noisy Fame and the Dynamics of Art and Power
  

  Virtual Paper Presenter: Sabina Knight – Smith College