Hongmei Sun

Chinese Graduate Advisor

Associate Professor

Chinese: Chinese literature and culture, Chinese myth and folklore, cross-cultural Traditional Chinese medicine, comparative literature, Asian American literature, translation studies, adaptation studies

Hongmei's research interest is around Chinese traditions in a cross-cultural context. Her manuscript, entitled Transforming Monkey: Adaptation and Representation, explores how the Chinese classic Journey to the West has been adapted in recent history from China to the United States, and how such adaptations have used the image of its protagonist Sun Wukong, aka. the Monkey King, in cross-temporal and cross-cultural representation, and in turn changed this iconic image.

Selected Publications

Transforming Monkey: Adaptation and Representation. Manuscript forthcoming with University of Washington Press, 2018.

“Becoming a Ruin: Breaking into The First Emperor’s Necropolis,” Frontiers of Literary Studies in China, 11: 2 (2017), 352–374.

“Time travel and chronotope: The Lost Empire and The Forbidden Kingdom as adaptations of Journey to the West,” Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies, 3:2 (2016), 175–187.

Courses Taught

CHIN 311 Modern Chinese Literature in translation

CHIN 320 Contemporary Chinese Film

CHIN 325 Major Chinese Writers (Women in Chinese literature)

CHIN 328 Asian American Woman Writers (China in Asian American writings)

CHIN 365 Readings in Chinese Fiction After Mao

CHIN 470 Special Topics in Chinese Studies (Food and Culture in China)

CHIN 475 Chinese Popular Culture

cHIN 481 Fourth Year Chinese II