Reconceptualizing Diasporic Intellectual Networks: Mobile Scholars in Transnational Space

• In Event: Reconceptualizing Boundaries and Identities Within and Across Cultures

Abstract

This paper explores how Chinese scholars in the U.S. recount their transnational collaborations and linkages. Guided by postcolonial theories and cultural studies of transnational academic mobility, the author utilizes in-depth interviews to resituate the scholars’ experiences within a discourse of diasporic intellectual networks. The author argues that their movement is not simply a transfer from one physical location to another, but rather the movement itself constitutes a new space of identification, of belonging, and of global imagination. The paper concludes by considering the transnational implications of local agency on global connectivity and emergence of new subjectivities in a fluid global world.

Author

• Qiongqiong Chen, University at Buffalo - SUNY