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About Victoria Lupascu

Victoria Oana Lupașcu is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at University of Montréal. Her areas of interest include medical humanities, visual art, 20th and 21st Chinese, Brazilian and Romanian literature and Global South studies.

Victoria Oana Lupașcu is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at University of Montréal. Her areas of interest include medical humanities, visual art, 20th and 21st Chinese, Brazilian and Romanian literature and Global South studies.

NBN Episodes hosted by Victoria:

Latin American Studies September 22, 2023

Reading the Walls of Bogota

Graffiti, Street Art, and the Urban Imaginary of Violence

Alba Griffin

Hosted by Victoria Lupascu
Listen:
A cultural imaginary is a structuring space through which collective understandings of cultural and society phenomena are formed, reproduced, and accepted as the norm. Reading the Walls of Bogota: Graffiti …
East Asian Studies August 2, 2023

Good Formulas

Empirical Evidence in Mid-Imperial Chinese Medical Texts

Ruth Yun-Ju Chen

Hosted by Victoria Lupascu
Listen:
Ruth Yun-Ju Chen is a historian of mid-imperial China (600–1400). Her research interests lie in the histories of medicine, publishing, and material cultures during this period. Her first book, Good …
East Asian Studies July 19, 2023

Seeking Western Men

Email-Order Brides Under China's Global Rise

Monica Liu

Hosted by Victoria Lupascu
Listen:
Commercial dating agencies that facilitate marriages across national borders comprise a $2.5 billion global industry. Ideas about the industry are rife with stereotypes-younger, more physically attractive brides from non-Western countries …
East Asian Studies July 18, 2023

Moulding the Socialist Subject

Cinema and Chinese Modernity (1949-1966)

Xiaoning Lu

Hosted by Victoria Lupascu
Listen:
Xiaoning Lu received her BA and MA in Chinese Literature and Language from Nanjing University and Fudan University respectively. She then earned her PhD in Comparative Literature from the State …
Medicine June 22, 2023

The Smile Gap

A History of Oral Health and Social Inequality

Catherine Carstairs

Hosted by Victoria Lupascu
Listen:
As recently as fifty years ago most people expected to lose their teeth as they aged. Few children benefited from braces to straighten their teeth, and cosmetic procedures to change …
Literary Studies October 18, 2022

Metaphor in Illness Writing

Fight and Battle Reused

Anita Wohlmann

Hosted by Victoria Lupascu
Metaphor in Illness Writing: Fight and Battle Reused (Edinburgh UP, 2022) argues that even when a metaphor appears problematic and limiting, it need not be dropped or dismissed. Metaphors are …
East Asian Studies September 8, 2022

Cold War Reckonings

Authoritarianism and the Genres of Decolonization

Jini Kim Watson

Hosted by Victoria Lupascu
How did the Cold War shape culture and political power in decolonizing countries and give rise to authoritarian regimes in the so-called free world? Cold War Reckonings: Authoritarianism and the …
East Asian Studies June 9, 2022

Minor China

Method, Materialisms, and the Aesthetic

Hentyle Yapp

Hosted by Victoria Lupascu
In Minor China: Method, Materialisms, and the Aesthetic (Duke UP, 2021), Hentyle Yapp analyzes contemporary Chinese art as it circulates on the global art market to outline the limitations of Western …
East Asian Studies May 23, 2022

Telling Details

Chinese Fiction, World Literature

Jiwei Xiao

Hosted by Victoria Lupascu
What is a detail? How is it different from xijie, its Chinese counterpart? Is "reading for the details" fundamentally different from "reading for the plot"? Did xijie xiaoshuo, the Chinese …
Gender Studies October 27, 2021

Infertility Comics and Graphic Medicine

Chinmay Murali and Sathyaraj Venkatesan

Hosted by Victoria Lupascu
Infertility Comics and Graphic Medicine (Routledge, 2021) examines women’s graphic memoirs on infertility, foregrounding the complex interrelationship between women’s life writing, infertility studies, and graphic medicine. Through a scholarly examination of the …
East Asian Studies October 26, 2021

Decadence in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture

A Comparative and Literary-Historical Reevaluation

Hongjian Wang

Hosted by Victoria Lupascu
European Decadence, a controversial artistic movement that flourished mainly in late-nineteenth-century France and Britain, has inspired several generations of Chinese writers and literary scholars since it was introduced to China …
East Asian Studies October 1, 2021

Healing with Poisons

Potent Medicines in Medieval China

Yan Liu

Hosted by Victoria Lupascu
At first glance, medicine and poison might seem to be opposites. But in China’s formative era of pharmacy (200–800 CE), poisons were strategically deployed as healing agents to cure everything …
East Asian Studies July 28, 2021

Cinema Off Screen

Moviegoing in Socialist China

Chenshu Zhou

Hosted by Victoria Lupascu
At a time when what it means to watch movies keeps changing, this book offers a case study that rethinks the institutional, ideological, and cultural role of film exhibition, demonstrating …
Literary Studies July 2, 2021

The Classics in South America

Five Case Studies

Germán Campos Muñoz

Hosted by Victoria Lupascu
Germán Campos Muñoz, The Classics in South America: Five Case Studies (Bloomsbury, 2021) examines the long and complex history of the Greco-Roman tradition in South America, arguing that the Classics …
Literary Studies July 2, 2021

At Penpoint

African Literatures, Postcolonial Studies, and the Cold War

Monica Popescu

Hosted by Victoria Lupascu
In At Penpoint: African Literatures, Postcolonial Studies, and the Cold War (Duke UP, 2020), Monica Popescu traces the development of African literature during the second half of the twentieth century …
East Asian Studies April 6, 2021

Anecdote, Network, Gossip, Performance

Essays on the Shishuo xinyu

Jack W. Chen

Hosted by Victoria Lupascu
Anecdote, Network, Gossip, Performance: Essays on the Shishuo xinyu (Harvard UP, 2021) is a study of the Shishuo xinyu, the most important anecdotal collection of medieval China—and arguably of the …
East Asian Studies March 19, 2021

Rethinking the Modern Chinese Canon

Refractions Across the Transpacific

Clara Iwasaki

Hosted by Victoria Lupascu
The texts that are examined in this study move in and out of different languages or are multilingual in their origins. Texts and authors do not move randomly; rather, they …
East Asian Studies January 29, 2021

Heritage and Romantic Consumption in China

Yujie Zhu

Hosted by Victoria Lupascu
The drums beat, an old man in a grand robe mutters incantation and three brides on horseback led by their grooms on foot proceed to the Naxi Wedding Courtyard, accompanied …
Literary Studies January 15, 2021

Teaching in Times of Crisis

Applying Comparative Literature in the Classroom

Hosted by Victoria Lupascu
Teaching in Times of Crisis: Applying Comparative Literature in the Classroom (Routledge, 2021) explores how comparative methods, which are instrumental in reading and teaching works of literature from around the …
East Asian Studies December 21, 2020

Asymmetrical Neighbors

Borderland State-Building Between China and Southeast Asia

Enze Han

Hosted by Victoria Lupascu
Asymmetrical Neighbors: Borderland State-Building Between China and Southeast Asia (Oxford UP, 2019) explains the variations in state building across the borderland area between China, Myanmar, and Thailand. It presents a …
Latin American Studies December 9, 2020

Creative Transformations

Travels and Translations of Brazil in the Americas

Krista Brune

Hosted by Victoria Lupascu
In Creative Transformations: Travels and Translations of Brazil in the Americas (SUNY Press, 2020), Krista Brune brings together Brazilian fiction, film, journalism, essays, and correspondence from the late nineteenth to …
East Asian Studies November 16, 2020

The Art of Persistence

Akamatsu Toshiko and the Visual Cultures of Transwar Japan

Charlotte Eubanks

Hosted by Victoria Lupascu
The Art of Persistence: Akamatsu Toshiko and the Visual Cultures of Transwar Japan (U Hawaii Press, 2019) examines the relations between art and politics in transwar Japan, exploring these via …
East Asian Studies August 31, 2020

Mass Vaccination

Citizens' Bodies and State Power in Modern China

Mary Augusta Brazelton

Hosted by Victoria Lupascu
While the eradication of smallpox has long been documented, not many know the Chinese roots of this historic achievement. In this revelatory study, Mass Vaccination. Citizens' Bodies and State Power …
Chinese Studies July 23, 2020

Re-enchanting Modernity

Ritual Economy and Society in Wenzhou, China

Mayfair Yang

Hosted by Victoria Lupascu
In Re-enchanting Modernity: Ritual Economy and Society in Wenzhou, China (Duke University Press, 2020), Mayfair Yang examines the resurgence of religious and ritual life after decades of enforced secularization in …