Teaching Staff
Dr. Emily Zong
- Assistant Professor
- OfficeRRS611
- Tel3411 2276
- Emailemilyzong at hkbu.edu.hk
Emily Y. Zong received her PhD in Literary Studies at The University of Queensland, Australia. She has previously taught gender studies and Australian literature at The University of Queensland. Her research and teaching interests include Asian Australian and Asian American diaspora studies, ecocriticism and the environmental humanities, gender and sexuality, and migrant and refugee studies. She has published widely on Asian diasporic identity, migrant women’s subjecthood and agency, refugee cultural memory, ethnicity and multiculturalism, and cosmopolitanism. In her current project, she examines how posthuman and speculative cultural forms enable new ways of theorising ethnic and migrant Asian subjectivity. She is also working on a book project exploring the cultural politics of race, place, and climate change in Asian Australian literature.
Emily’s work appears in Critique, ARIEL, ISLE, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Journal of Intercultural Studies, JASAL, The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel, among other venues.
Teaching areas: Asian diaspora literature and culture; environmental humanities; posthumanism; climate change and the Anthropocene; critical ethnic studies; gender studies; postcolonial theory
1. Cosmopolitanism in Asian Diasporic Literature:
Emily’s work on Asian diasporic literary criticism cluster around two dominant themes: the formation of diasporic identity in national and transnational contexts, and the politics of representation in diasporic women’s writing. She is especially interested in developing a cosmopolitan literacy that examines Asian diasporic subjecthood and agency within cultural pluralist frameworks. This approach is exemplified in her JIS article that rereads the model minority narrative in relation to new forms of cultural racism and cosmo-multicultural capital in Australia, and in her Critique article that calls for a shift of political engagement with refugee cultural memory from a “politics of recognition” to an “ethics of witnessing.”
2. Race and Ecology in the Anthropocene
The other thread of her work focuses on the intersection between race and ecology in Asian diasporic literature. This work is at the forefront of an emerging scholarship that recognises the importance of race and ethnicity in environmental literature. Her contribution to this conversation is particularly informed by the ways that posthuman and speculative cultural forms inspire new ways of theorising ethnic and migrant Asian subjectivity. For example, in an ISLE article, she explores how multispecies collaboration shapes a political future of posthuman queerness in Asian Australian speculative fiction.
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Peer-reviewed Articles: 1. Zong, Emily Yu. “The Making of the Asian Australian Novel.” Forthcoming in The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel, edited by David Carter. Cambridge University Press, 2022. 2. Zong, Emily Yu. “‘That ‘Willful’ Migrant Adulteress: Female Embodiment and Diasporic Melancholia in Chandani Lokugé’s Softly, As I Leave You.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, pre-published at: https://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2022.2049192 3. Zong, Emily Yu. “Anachronism in the Anthropocene: Plural Temporalities and the Art of Noticing in Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being.” LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory, vol. 32, no. 4, 2021, pp. 305-21. (https://doi.org/10.1080/10436928.2021.1977568) |
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4. Zong, Emily Yu. “Dragon Lovers and Plant Politics: Queering the Nonhuman in Hoa Pham’s Wave and Ellen Van Neerven’s ‘Water’.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, vol. 28, no. 3, 2021, pp. 1048-65. (https://doi.org/10.1093/isle/isaa106) |
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5. Zong, Emily Yu. “The Voice of Diversity: Picture Brides and Masked Individuality in Julie Otsuka’s The Buddha in the Attic.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing, vol. 57, no. 6, 2021, pp. 841-55. (https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2021.1964096) 6. Zong, Emily Yu. “Towards an Ethics of Witnessing: Refugee Memory and Community in Gish Jen’s World and Town.” 2021. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, published in advance at https://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2021.1891020) |
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7. Zong, Emily Yu. “Post-apocalyptic Specters and Critical Planetarity in Merlinda Bobis’s Locust Girl.” ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, vol. 51, no. 4, 2020, pp. 99-123. (https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/ariel/article/view/63035) |
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8. Zong, Emily Yu. “Disturbance of the White Man: Oriental Quests and Alternative Heroines in Merlinda Bobis’s Fish-Hair Woman” JASAL: Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, vol. 16, no. 2, 2017, pp. 1-17. |
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9. Zong, Emily Yu. “‘I Protest, Therefore I Am’: Cosmo-multiculturalism, Suburban Dreams, and Difference as Abjection in Hsu-Ming Teo’s Behind the Moon.” Journal of Intercultural Studies, vol. 37, no. 3, 2016, pp. 234-49. (https://doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2016.1163535) |
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10. Zong, Emily Yu. “Transnational Allegory, Domestic Cosmopolitanism: Towards a Cosmofeminine Space in Shirley Lim’s Joss and Gold.” New Scholar, vol. 4, no. 1, 2016, pp. 51-64. 11. Zong, Emily Yu. “Rethinking Hybridity – Amputated Selves in Asian Diasporic Identity Formation.” Worldmaking: Literature, Language, Culture, edited by Tom Clark, Emily Finlay, and Philippa Kelly. John Benjamins, 2017, pp. 189-200.
Review and Interview Articles: 12. Zong, Emily Yu. “Emily Yu Zong Reviews Everything Changes: Australian Writers and China.” Mascara Literary Review, vol. 23. 26 Apr. 2020. 13. Zong, Emily Yu, and Anoushka Dowling. “Coronavirus Racism Tests the Limits of Multicultural Australia.” Griffith University MATE Program Forum, 6 July 2020. 14. Zong, Emily Yu. “Chinese SF Beyond Politics – An Interview with Hao Jingfang.” Mascara Literary Review, vol. 22. Jun 2018. 15. Zong, Emily Yu. “‘I Have to Recuperate Love, and Grow it Back’—An Interview with Merlinda Bobis.” Mascara Literary Review, vol. 18. 1 Oct. 2015. 16. Zong, Emily Yu. “A Plague of Love – A Review of Merlinda Bobis’s Locust Girl.” Australian Women’s Book Review, vol. 26, no. 1-2, 2014, pp. 26-29. 17. Zong, Emily Yu. “Recording and Remaking the Story of Mother—A Review of Lily Chan’s Toyo.” Australian Women’s Book Review, vol. 25, no. 1, 2013, pp. 23-25.
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- 2022-2024, Principal Investigator, “Towards Anti-Racist Nature: Asian Australian Environmental Literature and Art” Early Career Scheme (ECS), Hong Kong Research Grants Council (HKD 390,132).
- 2023-2024, Principal Investigator, “Multispecies Storytelling” Arts Faculty Research Impact Fund, Hong Kong Baptist University (HKD 50,000)
- 2021-2022, Principal Investigator, “Cultural Imaginations of Invasive Species” Arts Faculty Start-up Research Grant, Hong Kong Baptist University (HKD 100,000)
- 2018-2020, Principal Investigator, “Posthuman Perspectives in Asian Diasporic Literature”, China Postdoctoral Science Foundation Project (International Recruitment Scheme, RMB 600,000)
- 2022. Teaching Grant, “Waterborne: A Climate Art Exhibition,” Centre for Innovative Service Learning, Hong Kong Baptist University (HKD 40,500)
