Emma J. Teng F'06

Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowships for Recently Tenured Scholars 2006
Associate Professor
Department: Foreign Languages and Literatures
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Chinese Eurasian: East-West Interracialism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

My project is a comparative study of Chinese and Chinese American representations of Chinese-Western interracialism (interracial marriage and biracial identity) at the turn of the 20th century. As imperialism and migration drew China and the West closer, intellectuals on both sides of the Pacific took up this controversial subject, using the Eurasian as a metaphor to condense the cultural anxieties and desires produced by East-West encounters. Through analysis of racial theory, literature, and visual texts, I examine how divergent understandings of race, culture, and gender informed constructions of the Eurasian among Chinese and Chinese American authors. I aim to extend our cross-cultural understanding of biracialism, and to bridge the divide between Asian and Asian American Studies.