General

AB (Harvard); MA, PhD (Stanford). I joined the English Department in 2011 after teaching at the National University of Singapore for four years. I previously worked for the Centre for Asian and African Literatures, based at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and jointly run by SOAS and University College London. My main research focus is British imperialism during the long ninteenth century, with a special interest in the relationship between Britain and China and Southeast Asia, as well as Latin America. I also work in the areas of postcolonial literatures and cultures, diaspora literature, and queer studies.

Research

My book China and the Victorian Imagination, which considers the role of China and the Chinese in British literature and culture from the 1840s to 1911, is due out from Cambriddge University Press in July/August 2013. I am also working on a project on the reception of Asian material culture in Britain and the empire during the nineteenth-century, covering such topics as food, imperial exhibtions, early film, and the representation of torture in popular British narrative.

Selected Publications

China and the Victorian Imagination: Empires Entwined (Cambridge UP).

"Queering Sensation," The Blackwell Companion to Sensation Fiction, ed. Pamela K. Gilbert (Oxford: Blackwell, 2011).

“Nineteenth-century Beefs: British Types and the Brazilian Stage,” Nineteenth-Century Contexts 32.4 (Dec. 2010).

“Room for Romance: Playing with Adventure in Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World,” Genre 43 (Spring/Summer 2010).

“Hong Kong, 1898,” invited piece for “Beyond Britain” forum, Victorian Review 36.2 (Spring 2010).

"Cooking Culture," co-ed. Suzanne Daly, Victorian Literature and Culture 36.2 (Sept. 2008).

Teaching and Supervision

In 2013-14, I am convening EN277: Ends and Beginnings and EN278: Asia and the Victorians. I am happy to supervise postgraduate and undergraduate work on ninteenth-century literature, Anglophone literatures and cultures, and queer studies.

Current PhD students:

Waiyee Loh

QIAO Qingquan