Lok Yee Luisa Wan, Christ's

Biographical Information

I am a second-year PhD student in the Faculty of English, funded by the Cambridge Trust. My research project is focused on the contemporary personal essay and explores the politics of identity and representation in postcolonial and neo-imperialistic contexts. Specifically, I am interested in how this mode of self-narrativization lends itself to alternative approaches to relationality and collectivity. In this regard, my research also examines personal representation in critical texts associated with postcolonial studies and Critical Race Theory.

Before coming to Cambridge, I was a teaching assistant in the Master of Arts in English Studies programme at the University of Hong Kong (2023-24). This is also the University where I completed my MPhil on postcolonial personal essays and my BA in English (Major) and Comparative Literature (Minor).

I am currently a co-convenor of the Postcolonial and Related Literatures (PARL) seminar at the Faculty of English.

Research Interests

My research interests broadly include life-writing, contemporary global Anglophone literature, postcolonial and anticolonial theory, critical race theory, queer theory, affect theory, and intellectual history.

In general, I am fascinated by 'minor' forms of literature that are aesthetically and generically unstable in their representation of identity and community.

Teaching Interests

I am happy to be contacted for supervision opportunities in Part II, Paper 1 ‘PCCP II’, Paper 11 ‘Prose Forms’, Paper 12 ‘Contemporary Writing in English’, Paper 13 ‘Literatures of the Global South’, Paper 15 ‘Ethical Imagination’, and Paper 16 ‘History & Theory of Literary Criticism’. I am also keen to supervise dissertations that align with my areas of interest.

Selected Publications

Conference Papers

“Articulating Care: Narrativization of Self as Place-making in Aftershock: Essays from Hong Kong (2020)”, Society for Hong Kong Studies Annual Conference (Hong Kong, June 2024)

“Queer Poiesis: Reversing the Other in Why Karen Carpenter Matters”, HKU School of English Postgraduate Seminar Session (University of Hong Kong, April 2023)

“Writing ‘Quotidian Sorrow’: Imagining Noninjuriousness in the Postcolonial Personal Essay”, American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting (Chicago, IL, March 2023)

 

I can be contacted at lylw2@cam.ac.uk.