Assistant Professor, East Asian Languages and Literatures
Ph.D., Comparative Literature, UC-Berkeley, 1996
East Asian Focus
Phone: (541) 346-4005
email: sang@uoregon.edu
Tze-lan Deborah Sang specializes in Twentieth-century Chinese literature, Qing vernacular and classical fiction, and gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender studies. Her most recent publication is "Cheng Dieyi - An Occasion for Interpretive Intervention," in Con-Temporary Monthly (Taipei, 1994). Her research interests include pre-modern and modern Chinese gay and lesbian literatures; Taiwan and Hong Kong gay identity politics; Eileen Chang; contemporary Mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong female writers; Chinese cinemas; alternative film aesthetics.
A few words from Professor Sang:
My research in the last few years has centered on female same-sex desire in modern Chinese literature and culture. My forthcoming book, The Emerging Lesbian: Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, argues that female homoeroticism had long been taken for granted in China as sisterhood and trivial sexual play; however, in the twentieth century it emerged into public debate as a medical and social problem. My study thus seeks to trace and reconstruct some of the processes through which such emergence occurred. It finds that the formation of the category of female homosexuality in modern China was a direct consequence of the globalization of science: certain conceptions of homosexuality gained global significance due to the spread of Western sexology and popular concepts of sexuality in the early twentieth century. Nonetheless, the particular formation of ideas about female same-sex love in modern China has not proved to revolve only around imported medical theories of biologically determined gender inversion and sexual orientation. Rather, the social significance of female same-sex relations has intensified with the changes in Chinese women's socio-economic and political profile. During the Republican period (1912-1949), not only was female same-sex love depicted in literature as a practice particularly popular among new-style career women (such as female teachers), but criticism of female same-sex love as sexual perversion also visibly stemmed from a growing male anxiety about certain women's new autonomy, reflecting an attempt to re-inscribe female sexuality within the bounds of the patriarchal family. A correlation between female same-sex love and women's liberation was perceived by male intellectuals early on, and such a link has been explicitly discussed in recent dialogues between lesbian activists and feminists in post-martial-law Taiwan. The link has similarly been explored by women's literature in post-Mao China, where fiction, because of its ambiguity, works as a relatively safe venue for discussions about female same-sex desire and non-conformist gender roles.
Besides my English publications, I have written in Chinese on Eileen Chang, Zhu Tianxin, classical Chinese theater, and Chinese film. I regularly offer courses on modern and contemporary Chinese literature, Taiwanese literature, and Chinese film and popular culture.
Selected Publications:
The Emerging Lesbian: Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture. Under contract with University of Chicago Press.
"At the Juncture of Censure and Mass Voyeurism: Narratives of Female Homoerotic Desire in Post-Mao China." GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, forthcoming in vol. 8, no. 4.
"Lesbian Feminism in the Mass-Mediated Public Sphere of Taiwan." In Spaces of Their Own: Women's Public Sphere in Transnational China, ed. Mayfair Mei-hui Yang. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. 132-61.
"Translating Homosexuality: The Discourse of Tongxing ai in Republican China." In Tokens of Exchange: The Problem of Translation in Global Circulations, ed. Lydia H. Liu. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999. 276-304.
"Atropurpurea," an original short story in Chinese. Today 52 (Spring 2001): 136-59.
"Gudu de dushi kongjian lunshu" (The discourse of urban space in 'The Old Capital'). Forthcoming in Space, Region and Culture, eds. Li Fengmao and Liu Yuanru. Taipei: Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica.
"Mudan ting zai haiwai de mingyun" (The fate of The Peony Pavilion abroad). Horizons 2 [Beijing] (January 2001): 208-20.
"Mudan sanyang kai" (Three productions of The Peony Pavilion). Daya, a Magazine on Art and Literature 11 [Taipei] (October 2000): 40-52.
"Chao xingbie yishi yu tongxing ai" (Gender transcendent consciousness and same-sex love" (an interview with the writer Chen Ran). In Chen Ran, Beyond Words. Beijing: Zuojia Publishing House, 2000. 101-39.
"Zhang Ailing Shiba chun ji Bansheng yuan yanjiu" (Eileen Chang's Eighteen Springs and The Affinity of Half a Lifetime: A study of the popular novel). In Chinese Literary Theory and Popular Culture, ed. Peng Hsiao-yen. 2 vols. Taipei: Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica, 1999. 677-705.
"Cheng Dieyi: Yige quanshi de qidian" (Towards a queer reading of Farewell My Concubine). Con-Temporary Monthly 96 [Taipei] (April 1994): 54-73.