Sinophone Studies Stream
Research Stream: Sinophone Studies
This research stream examines the societies and cultures where Sinitic languages are spoken beyond mainland China's political boundaries. Encompassing Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and Sinophone diasporas in Australia and elsewhere, it explores questions of identity and belonging that exceed a single national framework. Researchers investigate the literature, history, and society of these communities, attending to their distinct political trajectories and global interactions. By foregrounding plurality over a singular 'Chinese' narrative, this stream contributes to critical conversations about language, migration, and postcoloniality within contemporary Chinese studies.
Stream Coordinator: Craig A. Smith
Latest Publications
BOOK: Craig A. Smith, Sinophone Australia, Sydney University Press, Sydney, 2026. Link
Edited by Craig A. Smith, Sinophone Australia gathers Chinese-language letters, poems, travelogues, and newspaper articles from the 1850s gold rush era to the 1950s, translated into English with historian-written introductions. By centring these long-overlooked sources, the volume reframes Australian history through Chinese-speaking migrant voices, challenging Anglocentric historiography and situating Australia within the broader global Sinophone world.
BOOK: Qiuping Pan, Transnational Ties, Local Lives: Translocal Dynamics of Chinese Diaspora and Community Re-organisation, Routledge, New York, 2025. Link
Transnational Ties, Local Lives examines how Chinese diaspora communities in Australia organise and re-organise their civic and associational life. Drawing on multi-method ethnographic fieldwork, it develops a new theoretical framework for understanding these re-organisation processes, contributing to broader debates on identity, belonging, and community-building among migrant populations in a globalised world.
RESEARCH PAPER: Craig A. Smith. “From Collaboration to Commemoration: Zhang Wojun and the Ambiguities of Identity for Intellectuals from Taiwan.” Modern Asian Studies, 58.1 (2024): 56-77. Link.
This article traces the life of Zhang Wojun (1902–1955), a Taiwan-born writer and educator who spent 25 years in Beijing. It explores his shifting, ambiguous identity — a leading voice in Taiwan's New-Old Literatures Debate and May Fourth ideas, yet also a wartime intermediary between Japanese and Chinese literary circles, whose legacy defies straightforward national categorisation.
BOOK CHAPTER: Craig A. Smith and Dayton Lekner. “Taiwan Inside and Out: Redefining the Self During the Pandemic.” Discourses of Disruption: Creating and contesting meaning in the time of COVID-19. Edited by Michael Ewing, Claire Maree, and Ikuko Nakane. Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2023. Link.
Written by Craig A. Smith and Dayton Lekner, this book chapter (in Discourses of Disruption in Asia) explores how the classical Chinese concept of nei–wai (inside–outside) shaped Taiwan's self-understanding during COVID-19. It analyses how pandemic-era discourse about neighbouring countries reworked this internal/external binary, revealing shifting ideas of Taiwanese identity and its relationship to the wider region.
JOURNAL SPECIAL ISSUE: Melbourne Asia Review: Taiwan and Its Margins (Edition 17, February 2024). Link.
Edited by Craig A. Smith, this edition of Melbourne Asia Review brings together researchers examining Taiwan's ongoing negotiation of identity amid great-power rivalry. Contributors explore gender, queer literature, indigenous land rights, political self-fashioning, cross-strait tourism, cyberwarfare, and Chinese and Japanese cultural representations of Taiwan, collectively illuminating how Taiwan continually redefines itself from its geopolitically marginal position.
In the Media
- Sophie Loy-Wilson and Craig A. Smith. The Taiwanese pop megastar spreading the hidden Chinese history of Australia’s gold rush to a global audience, The Conversation, 2026. Link