Critical Zone 1

Amid the globalizing forces, whether economic, political, or cultural, there remain conspicuous differences and divergences that divide and antagonize scholarly communities. How should we understand and respond to those discursive gaps among different traditions and systems of knowledge production? Critical Zone is a book series that is envisaged as a forum where communities of critical scholarship can come together to share ideas and participate in the debates that preoccupy the humanities today. The series aims to improve understanding across cultures, traditions, discourses, and disciplines and to produce international critical knowledge. Critical Zone is an expression and an embodiment of timely collaboration among scholars in Hong Kong, mainland China, the United States and Europe and is conceived as an intellectual bridge between China and the rest of the world. Each volume in the series has two sections. The first section contains original articles on a set of related topics by scholars from around the world; the second section includes review essays highlighting one or two issues in regional critical scholarship and translations that reflect intellectual trends and concerns in the region, in particular in China.

Q. S. Tong is Associate Professor of English at the University of Hong Kong. Wang Shouren is Professor of English and Dean of the School of Foreign Studies at Nanjing University. Douglas Kerr is Associate Professor of English at the University of Hong Kong.

“With scholarly expertise drawn from a broad range of disciplines, this exciting inaugural volume of Critical Zone showcases the infinite discursive controversies, incommensurabilities, and potentialities embedded in that loaded historical encounter known as ‘China and the West.’ A unique and timely forum—one that will, I hope, continue to inspire us to reflect critically on the terms of cross-cultural communication.” —Rey Chow, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, Brown University

“The first issue of Critical Zone makes outstanding use of Hong Kong’s unique cultural and geopolitical location to launch an exciting, ambitious, and urgent new project of intellectual collaboration in challenging dialogue. This volume brings together a distinguished group of cultural scholars and literary critics from China, the US, and UK addressing matters of shared concern. The wide-ranging mixture of useful information, thoughtful analysis, and incisive speculation makes one eager for more to come.” —Jonathan Arac, Harriman Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University