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Dr Mabel Lee

BA Hons I, PhD (University of Sydney)
Adjunct Professor


Mabel Lee’s research deals with modern Chinese intellectual history and literature, and focuses on 2000 Nobel Laureate Gao Xingjian and 1999 (Italian) Flaiano Poetry Prize winner Yang Lian. She has published both translations of the major works of these two writers, as well as research that seeks to locate these two writers in modern/contemporary Chinese literary and intellectual history.

Research areas

  • Modern and contemporary Chinese literature and history

Current projects

  • Translation of Nobel Laureate Gao Xingjian’s book of essays Aesthetics and Creation.
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Selected publications

Translations

Of Gao Xingjian

  • Soul Mountain (Sydney, London, New York: HarperCollins, 2000), 555 pp.
  • One Man’s Bible (Sydney, London, New York: HarperCollins, 2002), 535 pp.
  • Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather (Sydney, New York, London: HarperCollins, 2004), 165 pp.
  • The Case for Literature (Sydney: HarperCollins, 2006, and Yale University Press, 2007), 178 pp.
  • “The Art of Fiction” in Arthur Sze ed., Chinese Writers on Writing (San Antonio, Texas: Trinity University Press, 2010), pp. 118-133.

Book Chapters

  • “Wang Lan’s Aesthetic Representations of Female Subjectivity” in Shen Jiawei, Wang Lan (Sydney: Wild Peony, 2010), pp. 1–8.
  • “Ai Weiwei: Under Construction”, Contemporary Visual Art & Culture: Broadsheet, 37.3 (September 2008): 197–199.
  • “Another Kind of Art: Gao Xingjian’s Explorations in Fiction, Painting, Theatre and Opera”, Meanjin, 66.4 & 67.1 (2007-08): 136-145.
  • “Two Autobiographical Plays by Gao Xingjian”, in Gilbert C. F. Fong trans., Gao Xingjian, Escape and The Man Who Questions Death (Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2007), pp. vii-xix.
  • “Aesthetics Dimensions of Gao Xingjian’s Painting,” in Between Figurative and Abstract: Paintings by Gao Xingjian (Notre Dame, Indiana: Snite Museum of Art, 2007), pp. 127-145.
  • Trans. Gao Xingjian’s “Concerning Silhouette/Shadow” in Fiona Sze-Lorrain ed., Silhouette/Shadow: The Cinematic Art of Gao Xingjian (Paris: Contours, 2007), pp. 19-34.
  • “Gao Xingjian: contre une modernité esthétique” (trans. from the English by Michel Doliniski), in Noel Dutrait ed., L’écriture romanesque et théâtrale de Gao Xingjian (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2006), pp. 13-23.
  • “Contextualising 2000 Nobel Laureate Gao Xingjian”, in Gao Xingjian, The Case for Literature (Sydney: HarperCollins, 2006), pp.1-24.
  • "Zarathustra’s ‘Statue’: May Fourth Literature and the Appropriation of Nietzsche and Lu Xun”, David Brook and Brian Kiernan, eds, Running Wild: Essays, Fictions and Memoirs Presented to Michael Wilding (Sydney and New Delhi: Sydney Association for Studies in Society and Culture Series, Manohar, 2004), pp. 129-143.
  • “Gao Xingjian’s Dialogue with Two Dead Poets from Shaoxing: Xu Wei and Lu Xun”, in R. D. Findeisen and R. H. Gassman (eds), Autumn Floods: Essays in Honour of Marián Gálik (Bern: Lang, 1998), pp. 401-414. Reprinted in Kwok-kan Tam (ed.), Soul of Chaos: Critical Perspectives on Gao Xingjian (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2001), pp. 277-292.
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Articles

  • “Gao Xingjian: An Ongoing Quest for Aesthetic Fulfilment”, in Gao Xingjian (Singapore: iPreciation, 2010): 6-13.
  • “Reverberations of Zhuangzi in Gao Xingjian’s Creations (in Chinese), Hong Kong Drama Review, 8 (2009): 123–134.
  • “Contextualizing Gao Xingjian’s Film Silhouette/Shadow”, MCLC Resource Center Newsletter, December 2007.
  • “Gao Xingjian’s Fiction in the Context of Chinese Intellectual and Literary History”, Literature and Aesthetics: The Journal of the Sydney Society for Literature and Aesthetics 16.1 (June 2006): 7-20.
  • "Nobel in Literature 2000 Gao Xingjian’s Aesthetics of Fleeing", CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture (March 2003).
  • "On Nietzsche and Modern Chinese Literature: From Lu Xun (1881-1936) to Gao Xingjian (b. 1940)", Literature and Aesthetics: The Journal of the Sydney Society of Literature and Aesthetics (November 2002): 23-43.
  • "Nobel Laureate Gao Xingjian and His Novel Soul Mountain", Comparative Literature and Culture, 2.3 (2000). URL Reprinted as “Gao Xingjian: First Chinese Winner of the Nobel Prize”, Persimmon: Asian Literature, Arts, and Culture (Spring 2001): 38-44. Also reprinted in China Education Newsletter (December 2001).
  • "Pronouns as Protagonists: Gao Xingjian’s Lingshan as Autobiography", China Studies, 5 (1999): 165-183. Reprinted as “Pronnomina selaku Protagonis: Lingshan Gao Xingjian sebagai Otobiografi”, KALAM: Jurnal kebudayaan, 17 (2001): 139-160. Also reprinted in Kwok-kan Tam (ed.), Soul of Chaos: Critical perspectives on Gao Xingjian (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2001), pp. 235-256.
  • "Gao Xingjian on the Issue of Literary Creation for the Modern Writer", Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 9. 1 and 2 (1999): 83-96. Reprinted in Kwok-kan Tam ed., Soul of Chaos: Critical Perspectives on Gao Xingjian (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2001), pp. 21-41.
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Conference activity

  • 25-26 September 2010: Invited speaker at the “International Conference on Chinese Literary Thought in Multiple Perspectives” co-hosted by the Center for Literary Theory Studies of Beijing Normal University and the Institute for Sinological Studies of Beijing Language and Culture University. Paper title: “Aesthetics and the Literary Text.”
  • 15 September 2010: Invited lecture in the Institute of East Asian Cultures at Hanyang University, Seoul. Paper title: “Gao Xingjian: Writer and Artist.”
  • 13-14 September 2010: Invited speaker at the 4th International Translators’ Conference sponsored by the Korean Literary Translators Institute, Seoul. Paper title: “Translating Fiction and Non-fiction Writings by Gao Xingjian.”
  • 24 & 25 October 2009: Invited participant to “The Flight of the Mind: Writing and the Creative Imagination”. National Library of Australia Conference supported by the Copyright Agency Limited (CAL)’s Cultural Fund, the Ray Matthew and Eva Kollsman Trust, and Alison Sanchez. Presented paper: “Of Writers and Translators”.
  • 28–30 May 2008: Invited participant to “Gao Xingjian: A Writer for His Culture, a Writer Against His Culture”. Chinese University of Hong Kong, 28–30 May 2008. International conference organized by The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), the French Centre for Research on Contemporary China (CEFC), and the University of Aix-Marseille. Presented paper: “Reverberations of Zhuangzi in Gao Xingjian’s Aesthetics.”
  • 11–13 April 2008: “Modern and Traditional Chinese Culture in the Eyes of Chinese and Foreign Sinologists during the First Decade of the Twenty-First Century”. International Symposium held at the Slovak Technical University, Bratislava. Presented paper: “On the Position of the Writer: Lu Xun and Gao Xingjian.”

    The “Homeland and Heartland” cross-cultural event held in September 2007 at Notre Dame University (South Bend Indiana) focussed on the two writers Gao Xingjian and Julia Alvarez.
    Presented paper: “Contextualizing Gao Xingjian’s Film Silhouette/Shadow.
  • Keynote Speaker: Translation Conference at the University of Sydney, 20/21 November 2006.
  • Panel member with Rifaat Ebied and Pat Clancy : in “Gift of the Gab: Australia and Languages” at the University of Melbourne 16/17 November 2006.
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Other professional contributions

Co-editor with A.D. Syrokomla-Stefanowska of The University of Sydney East Asian Series, three titles due for release:

  • Series No. 15. Eye of the Beholder: Reception and Audience of Modern Asian Art, ed. by John Clark, and T. K. Sabapathy and Maurizio Peleggi.
    ISBN: (1 876957 10 7) 978-1-876957-10-0. 320pp., including photographic reproductions.
    Publication date: December 2006.
    This book interrogates the relationship between different kinds of modern art and different kinds of cultural contexts in Asian and Pacific countries. The thirteen essays examines how the modern is formed by artists in relation to other traditions and practices (“Western” or “folk”), the audience and modern art institutions, and the burgeoning conceptions of the “national” as deployed by the post-colonial state. There are essays on the art codes of Maori folk designs applied to buildings, on academy painting in 19th century Indonesia and the Philippines, on contemporary video and performance art from China, on Cambodian street signage, and on the Asia Pacific Triennale. The methodologies applied are broad, from anthropology and art history to cultural studies, and the perspectives include those of academics, curators, and new media theorists. Building on the empirical work in Modernity in Asian Art (Wild Peony, 1993), Eye of the Beholder contributes a new and diverse understanding of where modern and contemporary Asian art is now situated.
  • Series No. 16. Japanese Prose Poetry by Yasuko Claremont.
    ISBN: (1 876957 09 3) 978-1-876957-09-4; 192 pp.
    Publication date: November 2006.
    This critical study examines the evolution of prose poetry in Japan during the twentieth century and demonstrates how from small French-inspired beginnings the form has risen to become part of the national poetic tradition. The book consists of nine chapters, concentrating selectively on key poets, key movements and the progressive impact of the times in shaping themes. Many of the poems discussed have not been accessible to English-speaking readers in translation, and consequently the poets – particularly the poets of today – remain unknown. The book includes contemporary Japanese criticism, and topics range from the early romanticism of Hagiwara Sakutarô to the modernist preoccupation with language as a subject for poetry in its own right. Of interest is the persistence of Zen Buddhist philosophy underpinning themes throughout the decades.
  • Series No. 17. Eight Contemporary Chinese Poets by Naikan Tao and Tony Prince.
    ISBN: (1-876957-08-5) 978-1-876957-08-7; 148 pp.
    Publication date: November 2006.
    This is an anthology of poems written by Yang Lian, Jiang He, Han Dong, Yu Jian, Zhai Yongming, Zhang Zhen, Xi Chuan and Hai Zi. These eight poets initiated the trends of élitist poetry, neo-realist poetry, women’s poetry and cosmopolitan poetry that dominated Chinese poetry from the mid-1980s for almost two decades and remain a continuing presence even today. This anthology documents the force of this body of powerful and innovative poetry that influenced not only the development of China’s contemporary poetry but also gave rise to the development of the “root-seeking”, “neo-realist”, “feminine” and “cosmopolitan” (or “intellectual”) schools of fiction. This unique selection of poems has been determined, not by the suitability of the poems for translation into English or by what they reveal about the personal backgrounds of the poets, but by the poetic, aesthetic, and human qualities of the poems themselves.
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