Jin C
- Research Program Mentor
PhD candidate at Stanford University
Expertise
Reading; Creative Writing; Literary analysis; French literature; Chinese literature; Comparative Literature; Cultural Studies
Bio
I was born and raised in Hong Kong, and I did my BA in Comparative Literature at Princeton University, where I did my senior thesis project on one of the first 19th century French translations of classical Chinese poetry. My current interests include 20th century North African literature written in both French and Arabic, literary interactions within Muslim communities in China and in France, language politics etc. The main languages that I work with are French, Chinese and Arabic. I love languages and if given a chance, would spend the rest of my life learning and collecting words, but there is also this thing called the PhD that I am enrolled in, which necessitates a dissertation... More on that as I make more progress! Here's more about me: https://www.princeton.edu/news/2017/05/26/other-words-valedictorian-chow-finds-connection-purpose-language-and-life-princetonProject ideas
Creative Writing
I have worked with students on projects ranging from book-length autobiographies to short stories, poetry collections, personal essays and more! Contact me if you're interested in learning how to engage in creative writing. Once we decide on a genre (poetry, drama, short story, autobiography, creative non-fiction, essays etc.), we will first devote a few sessions to reading, analyzing and learning to appreciate successful examples of that genre. Then we will move onto learning and trying out various writing techniques that would be helpful to writing in this genre. When you feel ready, we will dive into planning and structuring your very own piece of writing!
Literary Translation in Theory and in Practice
Have you ever been interested in translating from Chinese to English? English to French? Chinese to French? Come talk to me if that kind of project excites you! I love languages and would be more than thrilled to supervise and mentor a translation project where we study existing translations, learn about critical translation theory as well as translating a text of your choice! For example, we can work on learning to translate some of Baudelaire's poems into Chinese or English. In such a project, we would would learn about the history of translations of Baudelaire, explore questions and themes in critical translation theory, perform a critical comparison of the existing translations of his poetic works, and finally translate poems that you find particularly interesting.
The In's and Out's of Literary Analysis
If there's a book or an author you've always wanted to read but never had a chance to study at school, you've come to the right person. I've mentored students on projects where we design a literature course specific to their interests -- some students prefer to do their entire project on one text, others prefer choosing an author and studying a wide sampling of their works. For example, we can do a project on novels written by George Orwell, where we read his works chronologically, think about the evolution of his narrative style and literary themes, and ultimately produce a piece of analytical writing. In this project, you will learn how to both read and write thoughtfully, critically and analytically. This project can culminate in a conference paper, a journal article or an oral presentation, and we can also work on submitting it to journals and conference CfP's.