ALVIN WONG

Alvin Ka Hin Wong received his Ph.D. in Literature from the University of California, San Diego in 2012. He is currently a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor in Comparative Literature. His book project, Queer Theory and Chinese Modernity: Literature, Cinema, and Emergent Sociality, employs an inter-regional approach that crosses national paradigms in Chinese literary and cinema studies in order to trace the dynamics where literature, cinema, new media, and public cultures form emergent socialities. It shows how specific queer literary, cinematic, and new media productions intervene at the scattered hegemonies of nationalism, post-socialist Chinese capitalism, post-Martial Law sexual liberalism in Taiwan, and postcolonial state governance in Hong Kong. Conceptually, the book theorizes queerness as the potential to reconstitute existing dominant social relations. Overall, the book departs from East-West comparative models by turning to East-East modes of transnational comparisons.

His research and teaching interests include modern Chinese literature and cinema, Sinophone studies, feminist theory, queer studies, and transnational studies. Wong has published articles in the Journal of Lesbian Studies, Transgender China, ed. Howard Chiang (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), and Queer Sinophone Cultures (Routledge, 2013).