Utopia, Dystopia, Heterotopias: From Lu Xun to Liu Cixin, a lecture by David Der-wei Wang at Peking University on May 17, 2011, translated into English by Emma Xu.

In 2011, professor Wang gave a lecture in Peking University on the topic of Chinese science fiction. He related the three concepts in western literature—utopia, dystopia, and heterotopias to the study of Chinese literature and discussed two Chinese writers Lu Xun (鲁迅) and Liu Cixin (刘慈欣) from two different times. The following is an excerpt of his lecture on the development of Chinese science fiction in different periods of history. Read it here…

David Der-wei Wang (王德威) is Edward C. Henderson Professor of Harvard University and a member of Academia Sinica. His specialties are Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature, Late Qing fiction and drama, and Comparative Literary Theory. Wang received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and he has taught at National Taiwan University and Columbia University.