Reading Imperial Cartography: Ming-Qing Historical Maps in the Library of Congress, courtesy of C. V. Starr East Asian Library, Columbia University
“Map of Sea Lanes of the Eastern and Southern Seas,” Dongyang nanyang haidao tu, courtesy of the First Historical Archives of China, Beijing
This summer, my research project centers on islands as crucial protagonists in investigating the literary representation of “foreignness” in early modern East Asian and Mediterranean contexts. I derived my fascination with the topic of “islands” as alternative spaces where civilizations negotiate their boundaries from my long-term academic interest at the intersection of textual and visual media, regional studies and comparative literature, and the broader historical issues of “the early modern period.” While double-majoring in East Asian Studies and Comparative Literature, I benefited from taking a rich spectrum of courses that provided me a solid knowledge foundation to “think textualities with islands” (my foremost conceptual emphasis in the project), grounded in bibliographic and archival tracings in each tradition in tandem with shifting theoretical visions on what constitutes the maritime. Drawing on sources from different “genres” of texts, including vernacular novels, official histories, diplomatic writings, as well as visual representations, I invite the complex question of “the ethics of comparison” into the conceptualization of “islands” at the crossroads of languages, empires, and the heterogeneous group of historical agents.
