Profile picture of Alison Groppe

Alison Groppe

Associate Professor, Chinese Literature
Asian Studies, East Asian Languages
Phone: 541-346-7015
Office: 317 Friendly Hall
Office Hours: Fall 2021: Tuesday 230-430pm

Statement

My research focuses primarily on contemporary Malaysian Chinese
literature and its representation of cultural identity; I see this
literature as taking shape within its local social and political
context as well as in relation to Chinese literatures produced in
mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. More broadly, I am interested in
postcolonial and diaspora theory, conceptualizations of the Sinophone,
and the formation and representation of local and regional Chinese
identities. My current book project brings together these textual and
theoretical interests.

More recently, I have been concentrating on the circulation of popular
culture between the cities of Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei, Kuala
Lumpur and Singapore, and the ways in which this circulation has
allowed the ethnic Chinese populations in cities across the globe to
connect and interact with each other in the 20th century. More
specifically, I am intrigued by the expressions of nostalgia for the
Chinese popular music, film and literature of the 1930s through the
1970s in contemporary Malaysian and Taiwan Sinophone stories and
films; I am currently exploring what this nostalgia means for the
construction and representation of contemporary Chinese identities.

I teach a range of courses in modern Chinese literature and film. Many
of my courses contain a transnational dimension; for example, my
courses on Chinese film include the cinemas of mainland China, Hong
Kong and Taiwan. In general, my approach to these subjects focuses on
both textual and contextual analysis. In other words, we divide our
time between scrutinizing the texts themselves and considering the
social factors of their production. Themes and issues that frequently
arise in class lectures and discussions include nationalism/
transnationalism, identity formation and representation, and gender.