Project description
Studying contemporary Chinese fantasy fiction
Chinese fantasy fiction, especially genres like science fiction, silk punk and Eastern fantasy, has gained significant popularity. This growth has transformed the field and positioned it as a key lens through which to understand contemporary Chinese society and current debates about the role of history, culture, technology and soft power. However, it remains surprisingly understudied in Chinese studies. The ERC-funded SINOFANTASY project will comprehensively explore this aesthetically diverse, politically sensitive and popular literary field. A central aim of the project is to examine fantasy both as a literary genre and a socio-cultural phenomenon, providing novel insights into how literary production intersects with social norms, media infrastructures and power dynamics in contemporary China.
Objective
Fantasy fiction is one of the most understudied areas in in the field of contemporary Chinese literature, a gap that is particularly striking given the current popularity of genres such as Eastern fantasy, science fiction, and silk punk. Over the past two decades, Chinese fantasy fiction has undergone both a quantitative surge and a qualitative transformation, evolving from a niche youth subculture into a fixture of everyday cultural life. The popularity of fantasy fiction reflects not only its mass market appeal, but also its importance in mediating contemporary debates. As a result, fantasy fiction has become a central focus of China’s soft power ambitions, but also one of the most closely monitored areas of cultural production. SINOFANTASY is the first comprehensive study to explore this thematically diverse, immensely popular, and politically sensitive literary field.
Current research on fantasy fiction in China is skewed towards media analysis and often dismissive of the genre’s formulaic aesthetics and alleged disengagement from socio-political realities. Within fantasy studies there is also a strong bias towards science fiction, which has a critical pedigree in the West and addresses issues in a more realist key. SINOFANTASY addresses these knowledge gaps and biases by developing a novel, integrative approach to Chinese fantasy fiction and its role within a censored media landscape. In doing so, SINOFANTASY also makes a vital contribution to the global history of fantasy fiction.
SINOFANTASY has three main goals that address the meaning, embedding, and agency of fantasy fiction:
1) to develop a historically embedded and theoretically sophisticated account of contemporary Chinese
fantasy fiction;
2) to study the relationship between fantasy fiction and key socio-cultural and political developments and debates of the postsocialist period;
3) to analyze the role of fantasy fiction and practices of fantasy fandom within the wider Chinese mediasphere.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2025-STG
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KY16 9AJ ST ANDREWS
United Kingdom
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