Bio

Yayun Zhu is writing his dissertation on the city of Nanjing during the Ming-Qing dynastic transition. Nanjing, the Southern Capital of the Ming dynasty, was not only a physical site of dramatic displacement during the Manchu conquest, but a cultural centre for the imaginations of talented literary men and women. Using a variety of sources such as poetry, biography, memoirs, paintings, miscellaneous jottings and gazetteers, this dissertation studies the immediate and later responses of literati members to the Manchu takeover of the city. It limns a cultural and literary landscape in a time of national crisis, with particular focus on poetic representations, literary networks, emotions, trauma and memory. Yayun previously studied economics and Japanese literature.