Maria L. Bo
Assistant Professor
Biography
My research is fundamentally comparative, specializing in modern literature between East Asia and the Americas. The real love of my intellectual life is translation: what problems it causes, what unplanned effects it has, and how it reveals the stories we tell ourselves as we attempt to connect with each other. In that vein, my current work focuses on literary propaganda between the U.S. and China during the Cold War. In particular, I explore how such literary relations help us to re-imagine traditional boundaries of what counts as "Asian American" cultural production. I teach classes in literary criticism and theory, comparative literature, translation theory, and critical race theory.
Degrees
2018, Ph.D, English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University
2014, M.Phil., English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University
2011, M. A., English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University
2009, B.A., English and Linguistics, UC Berkeley
Research Areas
Diasporic Asian Literature, Asian American Literature, 20th Century Multi-Ethnic U.S. Literature, Comparative Literature, Critical Translation Theory, Critical Race Theory
Publications
“Freedom Overseas: Eileen Chang, Ernest Hemingway, and the Translation of Truth in the Cold War.” Comparative Literature, vol. 71, no. 3, September 2019.
“Language Lessons: Translating Jade Snow Wong’s Fifth Chinese Daughter and the Making of An Ethnic American.” Arizona Quarterly, forthcoming.
"Created Equal or Made Equivalent?: Translating Linguistic Rights and the Problem of Language Justice,” Columbia University Press, Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar publication on Global Language Justice, ed. Lydia Liu, forthcoming.
