Cynthia Zhang

Summary Statement of Research Interests

In the wake of the postmodern death of grand narratives, much work in post-postmodernism grapples with the questions of how to find or create new systems of meaning. My research focuses on the efforts, with particular attention paid to how minorities – people of color, women, LGBTQIA folx, etc – use postmodern techniques to imagine better frames of meaning making. In addition to examining contemporary literary fiction, my work focuses heavily on speculative fiction, a genre whose freedom from what Kit Hume calls “consensus reality” makes it a particularly apt space for imagining alternative futures/presents.

Research Keywords

Speculative fiction, new media postmodernism, minoritarian literature