Mai Wang⁠ is an assistant professor of literature at UT Dallas, where she teaches Asian American and Chinese diasporic literature. Her first book project, The Asian American Renaissance, examines the imaginative alliances formed between diasporic Asian American authors and their nineteenth-century American predecessors.

In this conversation: How Asian American authors have formed imaginative alliances with their 19th century predecessors; ⁠Eileen Chang⁠ and Emerson’s concept of negative freedom; ⁠Carlos Bulosan⁠ and ⁠America Is in the Heart⁠; and much more!

Further reading:

Mai Wang, “Crossing the Bamboo Curtain: Occidentalism and the English Language in Cultural Revolution Memoirs” (2024)

Mai Wang, “Eileen Chang, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the Politics of Cold War Translation” (2021)

Mai Wang, “Carlos Bulosan, Walt Whitman, and the Transnational Jeremiad” (2021)