Dr Ying Xin Show

Southeast Asian History and Literature (esp. Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia), Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Chinese and Sinophone literature, Chinese Diaspora, Translation, Memory

I am a Lecturer at ANU School of Culture, History and Language and Deputy Director of ANU Malaysia Institute, living and working on the unceded lands of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples since late 2019. Prior to this, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the International Center for Cultural Studies, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan (2018-2019), visiting researcher at KUNCI Cultural Studies Center, Yogyakarta, Indonesia (2018) and part-time lecturer at the Chinese Department of University of Malaya (2017-2018). 

Outside academia, I worked as assistant editor at the online independent news portal Malaysiakini in Kuala Lumpur from 2015 to 2017. I co-founded Rumah Attap Library & Collective (2017-), an independent cultural studies library and community-building space in KL. I am also a translator working in Chinese/Mandarin, English and Malay languages. 

I have broad interests ranging from 20th-century Asian history, movements and literature to contemporary politics and society. I am particularly interested in exploring the history and culture of migration, decolonization and the impact of the Cold War on Asian societies through literature and arts. My PhD thesis compares contemporary Anglophone and Sinophone Malaysian literature on issues related to the politics of national identity, ethnicity and language. I have co-edited (with Ngoi Guat Peng) Revisiting Malaya: Uncovering Historical and Political Thoughts in Nusantara (published by Gerakbudaya 2020). 

My current book project deals with the cultural history of Sinophone/Chinese community in the making of Malaya, 1945-1969. It examines knowledge and literary productions, cultural networks and institutions as prisms to explore issues and debates such as localization, modernism, left-wing politics, gender and translation during the Malayan Emergency and in the geopolitical context of the global Cold War. 

Apart from my research, I am also the translator of Singaporean writer Alfian Sa'at's short stories collection Malay Sketches into the Chinese language (published in Nov 2020), which was shortlisted for Singapore newspaper Lianhe Zaobao's 2020 Annual Book Award. 

Beh, Zhaoyen (MA, Co-supervisor)- The Sedition Act 1948: The Making of Race, Religion and Royalty in Postcolonial Malaysia. National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan. 2020.