Event: Talk by Professor Xu
Date: May 7, 2026
Time: 4:00-5:30 PM
Room: Humanities Gateway (HG 1002)
Theory and Translation: A Crip Epistemology of Modern China
Why does the field of modern Chinese literary and cultural studies need crip theory, and what critical work might a crip epistemology perform? What does it mean to crip modern Chinese literature—and how might we translate the very word “crip” into Chinese? What can crip critique do for disability justice? In this talk, I draw on my forthcoming book, Crip China: Ablenationalism and Disability Aesthetics, to examine the translatability of crip theory and discuss its critical force. With a dual focus on theory and translation, and through readings of Shi Tiesheng and Yu Xiuhua, I develop a “cripistemology” of modern China and articulate its critical-political significance for modern Chinese cultural studies.
Hangping Xu holds a Ph.D. in Chinese Literature from Stanford University, where he received the Centennial Teaching Award. He is currently Assistant Professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His publications have appeared in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, PRISM: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature, Chinese Literature and Thought Today, Queer Literature in the Sinosphere, and The Cambridge History of Literature and the Environment, among other venues. His book, Crip China: Ablenationalism and Disability Aesthetics, is forthcoming in 2026 with De Gruyter Brill.
This event is supported by Dept of EAS, Center for Medical Humanities, Global Asias, and The Long US-China Institute.