2023-2024 (Track A)

Support a New Scholar Awardee:

Yilun Fan

Joy Hancock

Brief Bio

Yilun Fan is a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature at University of California, Riverside, with a designative emphasis in Speculative Fiction and Cultures of Science. She is generally interested in science fiction(China and Latin America), cultural studies, and creative writing. In
her research, she emphasizes an intercultural and  interdisciplinary approach, which views science fiction as a dialogue and a battleground for different ideologies. Aside from her studies, she is also an enthusiastic writer, translator, and editor. Her award-winning short stories have been translated into several languages, and she has served on the jury committee for the 11th Nebula (Xingyun) Awards for Global Chinese Science Fiction (2021). She is the associate secretary-general of the
World Chinese Science Popularization Writers Association and editor of the Newsletter for Science Fiction Studies.

Research Summary

Juxtaposing Chinese time travel texts with those of Anglophones, Yilun’s dissertation, The Desire Called Uchronia: Time Travel Narratives in Chinese Speculative Fiction, explores the subtle interplay between modernity myths, postcolonial unconsciousness, feminist aspiration, and fandom engagement by interrogating the production and consumption of Chinese time travel narratives from pre-modern times to the digital age. She argues that the manifested desire for uchronia is an alternative to the repressed utopian fantasies negotiated with chronopolitics. Yilun is also working on a comparative research project between Chinese and Latin American science fiction to explore the transcultural poetics and politics of this global genre.

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