Professor Alfred Hornung Invited to Give Lecture at Hebei University

On the afternoon of October 29, Professor Alfred Hornung, Member of Academia Europaea and Professor at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in Germany, was invited to give an academic lecture at Hebei University entitled “Cross-Cultural and Interdisciplinary Approaches to Life Writing.”

In his lecture, Professor Hornung noted that cross-cultural life writing can transcend geographical and cultural boundaries and deftly capture the complexity of identity construction in processes such as transnational migration, travel, and displacement. Taking The Woman Warrior as an example, he discussed this complexity, pointing out that it represents not only a cross-cultural dialogue but also an interdisciplinary dialogue between autobiographical poetics and postmodern anthropology. The interdisciplinarity of life writing has already been established at both the research and the creative levels. The interdisciplinary integration of life writing and the life sciences has given rise to research fields such as biohumanities, medical humanities, narrative medicine, illness narrative, and disability narrative. Writers from a wide range of backgrounds have published a large number of autobiographical and narrative works that closely connect individual life experience with medicine, pharmacy, neuroscience, and other fields, providing textual evidence for interdisciplinary research on life writing. Turning to new forms of life writing in the 21st century, Professor Hornung presented specific examples of transmedia life writing and discussed the directions in which the form and content of life writing may further evolve in a posthuman world.

Professor Ye Huijun, Dean of the School of Foreign Studies, and nearly 400 faculty members and students attended the lecture, which was chaired by Professor Mu Junfang, Associate Dean of the School.

During the interactive session, faculty members and students asked questions enthusiastically, and Professor Hornung responded in a lively manner. The lecture provided valuable perspectives for faculty and students to understand the historical development and frontier trends of life writing research, and offered useful reference for the University’s related academic research and its cross-cultural and interdisciplinary academic exchange.