Weibing Ni

Selwyn College
  • PhD student
Weibing Ni

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Research Topic: Seeking Alternative Lives as Resistance: The Representations of Asian Immigrants in Francophone and Anglophone Caribbean Literature

Supervisor: Prof Charles Forsdick

Weibing has a long held interest in Comparative Literature and Postcolonial Studies. During her MPhil in European, Latin American, and Comparative Literatures and Cultures at the University of Cambridge, she focused on Algerian literature, including works by Kamel Daoud and Leïla Sebbar. In her undergraduate studies at Nankai University, she specialised in comparative and world literature, and spent a semester as an exchange student at the University of California, Berkeley.

Scholarships/Prizes                                                                                               

  • 2024 Peter Bayley Award - University of Cambridge
  • 2024 Simon Gaunt Postgraduate Travel Award – Society of French Studies
  • 2024 Smuts Memorial Fund – University of Cambridge

  • 2022-2024 Odette de Mourgues fund

    Conference Papers

  • ‘Lines of Flight and Affiliations in Crossings: Caribbean Literary Imaginations of Asian Figures in Relation to Marronage’, Caribbean Mundus, l'Université des Antilles (le Campus de Schoelcher), Martinique, 23, 24 et 25 mai 2024
  • ‘Reimagining Intimacies Between Afro- and Sino-Caribbeans: Marronnage in Raphaël Confiant, Patricia Powell, and Victor Chang’, Cultural Production and Social Justice seminar, Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics, University of Cambridge,  22 February, 2024
  • ‘The Rhetoric of Creole Identity, Community Belonging and Racialisation: Haitian Neighbours and Asian Others in Francophone and Anglophone Caribbean Novels’, Modern French Research Seminar, University of Cambridge, UK, 11 October, 2023
  • ‘Against the Grain of Nationalist Rhetoric and Cultural Hybridity: Analysing Characters in Errantry in the Literary Works of Maryse Condé and Jan Shinebourne Lowe’, 47th Annual Conference of the Society for Caribbean Studies, Leicester, UK, 6 July, 2023

  • ‘Diasporic Relationality and Cultural Identity: Analysing l'errance culturelle in the Literary Works of Maryse Condé and Jan Lowe Shinebourne’, 8th Society for Caribbean Studies Postgraduate Conference, Virtual,  21 April 2023.
  • ‘Interrogating the Double Diasporization and Racial Ambiguity in the Literary Works of Maryse Condé and Jan Lowe Shinebourne’,  Culture on the Move: Gradcafé, The Centre for the Study of Global Human Movement, University of Cambrige, UK, 13 March 2023
  • ‘Rethinking Creolité in French Caribbean Communities: A Critical Reading of Maryse Condé’s Traversée de la mangrove and Célanire cou-coupé’,  French Graduate Conference, University of Cambridge, UK, 13 January 2023
  • ‘Representations of the Subaltern from a Diasporic Perspective: Comparison between Balzac et la petite tailleuse chinoise and The Lost Daughter of Happiness’, Identities in Motion: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on Mobilities and Crossings, UnCaNI (University of  Cambridge Nationalisms & Identities Research Group), University of Cambridge, 28 June 2021     

Research

Weibing’s research interests include comparative literature, critical race theory, postcolonial studies, gender studies, migration studies, and diaspora studies. Her PhD project investigates the productive tensions between the ideas of Créolité, creolisation, métissage and cultural hybridity and the representation of Asian indentured workers and their descendants in Francophone and Anglophone Caribbean writings. Through analysis of literary works by Maryse Condé, Raphaël Confiant, David Dabydeen, Cristina García, Ernest Moutoussamy, Arlette Minatchy-Bogat, Janice Shinbourne, Ramabai Espinet, Kerry Young, and Patricia Powell, she explores alternative forms of ethnic positionalities and communal belonging, challenging the essentialist notions of class, ethnicity, race and gender stratified under colonial structures.  She investigates how the histories of resistance, resilience and freedom of enslaved people and indentured workers interweave, exploring the narratives of inclusive community that emanate from anti-colonial joint struggles across ethnicities. She explores the poetics that sustain the agency, voice, and opacity of marginalised subjects who face discrimination and violence on the grounds of ethnicity, phenotypical traits, class, gender and sexuality in colonial and postcolonial settings. Her project, from an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective, aims to contribute to a counter-narrative that salvage the scraps of the dispossessed, whose voices are silenced in the colonial archives.

Weibing conducted empirical studies and historical archival research during her fieldwork in Martinique and Jamaica.  Actively engaging in the process of grounded theory, Weibing conducted numerous interviews based on oral history with descendants of indentured workers, artists, community leaders, and others who identify as belonging to Sino-Caribbean and Indo-Caribbean communities to understand their lived experiences and sense of belonging in the kaleidoscopic Caribbean cultural milieu.

Teaching and supervision

Weibing supervises FR12 paper (Ethics and experience: literature, thought, and visual culture of the French-speaking world (1900 to the present), teaches Critical Theory seminar, and supervised Soc12 – Empire, colonialism, imperialism 

Weibing welcomes enquiries from students wishing to carry out undergraduate dissertation projects or year abroad projects relevant to her research interests. 

Other activities and roles

Weibing is the co-organiser of the conference on 'Comparative Subalternities: Solidarity and Intersectionality across Disciplines', held in Cambridge on 18th June 2024.

She is also a member of The Society of French Studies and Society for Caribbean Studies.