An intellectual home in challenging times

I heard about the Institute for World Literature (IWL) at Harvard University through the Graduate Center for Literary Research at UC Santa Barbara. There was a call for applications to the IWL on the Center’s website. With generous support from the Center as well as the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at UCSB, I was honored to attend Professor Laurence Venuti’s and Professor David Damrosch’s seminars in the summer of 2021. This experience has remained one of the most formative moments in my intellectual development, both professionally and personally.

The two seminars were particularly appealing to me because of their close relevance to my prior and ongoing research. As an English major in China, I found Professor Venuti’s work on translation studies indispensable for understanding the political and ideological dimensions of translingual encounters between Chinese and English. Later, after embarking on graduate studies in comparative literature in the United States, I was deeply inspired by Professor Damrosch’s reflections on world literature, which provided a valuable framework for thinking about modern China’s engagement with the world through literary and cultural exchanges. Their collective insights into translation, circulation, and the global movement of texts continue to inform my research on the intersections of literature, media, and politics in modern China.

Today, as a Ph.D. candidate in East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University and an affiliate of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, I continue to engage with many of the intellectual concerns that first crystallized during my time at the IWL. My current research examines the transnational circulation of print media and literary texts in socialist China, paying particular attention to the ways translation, publication, and distribution connected the People’s Republic of China to global cultural and ideological currents during the Cold War. In many ways, this project builds upon the questions of world literature, translation, and cross-cultural exchange that I explored in the IWL seminars. 
 

On a more personal level, the program provided an intellectual home during one of the most difficult periods of my life. I attended the virtual seminars from a hospital while caring for a family member who had just undergone major surgery. In the midst of the uncertainty and emotional strain of that summer, the seminars became a source of stability and encouragement. Through my headphones, the quiet, somber atmosphere of the hospital was punctuated by stimulating discussions among students and scholars from around the world. The generosity of the instructors, the rigor of the conversations, and the sense of intellectual community transformed what could have been an isolating experience into one of connection and discovery. For that reason, the IWL was far more than an academic program for me. It offered companionship, inspiration, and hope at a moment when I needed them most, and it remains one of the most meaningful experiences of my life.

Yan Liu

2021 IWL alumnus, PhD student

Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures

Columbia University