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Gal Gvili - Graduate Program Director
Associate Professor
Gal Gvili studies and teaches modern and contemporary Chinese literature. Her articles have appeared or are forthcoming in , , , , Inter-Asia Cultural Studies and the edited volume . Her book (Columbia University Press, 2022, Winner of the Harry Levin First Book Award in Comparative Literature, ACLA) examines how the image of India, in particular, Chinese writers’ multifaceted visions of Sino-Indian connections, shaped the making of a new literature in the twentieth century.
Her current project, tentatively titled Possessed: Superstition and Gender in Modern Chinese Literature examines how gender and superstition are co-constituted by exploring the literary portrayal of superstitious persons in Chinese literature of the 20th and 21 centuries. The study contributes a literary perspective to a growing body of scholarship—from religion studies, history, anthropology, gender and women studies—on the historical formation and contemporary endurance of the discursive construct “superstition” in governance, culture, and gendering practices of former colonial spaces.
Research Interests: China-India literary relations in the modern era, literary theory, postcolonial criticism, gender studies, religion studies.