Miya Qiong Xie

This project examines modern Chinese, Korean, and Japanese literatures from the early to mid-twentieth century written in or about Manchuria, a frontier and borderland space in northeast Asia. Based on extensive fieldwork, the study is among the first in English to delineate the colorful but largely overlooked landscape of a trilingual Manchurian literature, highlighting its ideological complications and ethical burdens. It asks how literary recreation of the once-contested frontier redefines national and imperial territory and identity in modern East Asia. It specifically probes what this study terms frontier subjectivity, a geopolitically specific perspective instigated by constant and difficult negotiations between the national and the multi-national. This case study of frontier literature addresses critical concerns such as transnationality, multilingualism, and cultural affinity and subjectivity.