Qiyu Chen | Humanities and Social Sciences | SIU

Qiyu Chen is a scholar of African literature with transnational and comparative perspectives. She earned her dual-title Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and African Studies from Pennsylvania State University in 2024 and her B.A. in English and History from Tsinghua University (Beijing) in 2019. Her research interests include modern African literature (Anglophone and Kiswahili), Cold War literary studies, Africa-China literary relations, Black Internationalism, postcolonial theory, and African feminism.

Her publications have appeared or are forthcoming in the Journal of the African Literature Association (JALA) and the Journal of World Literature. She is currently working on a project that focuses on independent Black presses and publishing houses active in the 1970s, where African and African diasporic intellectuals collaborated to develop new visions of African literature and cultural production.