Discovering a Passion for Literature

A literary career was not always what Singapore-born Dr Jerrine TAN, Assistant Professor at CityU’s Department of English, imagined for herself. One of the university’s newest faculty members, she joined in the summer of 2021. She was previously bound for medical school. But at the age of 18, she realised, “How can I know what I want to do with the rest of my life?”

As an act of self-discovery, Tan opted to abandon her spot in medical school and to go to the US to pursue a liberal arts education. “I convinced my parents and they generously let me go. So, my trade-off with my parents was I would study economics—to be very practical—but generally, I was not good at it. I didn’t take to it.”

But when the friends she made at Berkeley spoke about their own subjects with considerable passion, it stirred Tan’s curiosity. “I’m like, wait, you enjoy what you are studying?” She realised that could be her, too.

And it was the liberal arts stream that stoked the same passion in her that she witnessed in others. “I took classes in philosophy and I really enjoyed my English and Literature classes.”

“Being in that liberal arts environment really changed the way I thought about approaching education and the things I was studying.”

“But the truth is, I actually came to English as a major quite late, and so by the time I graduated, I felt like I hadn’t had enough time to explore. I wanted to take more classes,” Tan says. Her journey into applying for a PhD in the subject was nevertheless a pragmatic one. “I didn’t want to pay for a Master’s degree,” she laughs. “And in the US if you get into a PhD programme, it’s included, so I decided to go all in and applied for a PhD. I felt I’d be a better student than a worker, so I decided to study for a bit longer.”

Tan’s current research interests lie at the intersection of global anglophone literature, transnational literature and film, gender and sexuality studies, and critical race theory.

The assistant professor received her MA and PhD in English from Brown University, after graduating from the University of California, Berkeley with a BA double majoring in Economics and English.

Adventurer Seeking New Research Ideas
Tan’s fascination with Hong Kong would eventually lead her to taking up an academic position in the city last summer. “I grew up in Singapore on a diet of Hong Kong movies,” she says. “It was quite unexpected, but when the opportunity arose, it was very exciting for me to be able to come to Hong Kong.”

Living in different cities all over the world is not a strange concept to Tan. She was based in the US for a long time, but during that period, she also spent summers in Germany and Shanghai, and lived in Tokyo on two separate occasions. “Part of that is also… being moved by certain practicalities of graduate school. As an international student in the US, it can be quite difficult to get funding; a lot of the fellowships and grants are only eligible for American citizens. As an international student, I became very adept at seeking out alternative sources that would allow me to do my research.”

This would lead Tan to sometimes unexpected places. “I think that’s also part of my personality. I tend to approach these opportunities with more curiosity than fear. I think some people may feel more hesitant about moving to a new place, for good reason. But my approach was always like, ‘Oh, that’s a new adventure, right? That’s something exciting.’ So when Hong Kong became an option, I was excited about it and I’m very happy to be here.”

Female Figure and Eco-feminism
These days, the English Assistant Professor is working on two separate projects alongside teaching her classes. One is a continuation of her PhD research regarding global Anglophone literature. She has a keen interest in transnational literature, novels by immigrants or people with hybrid identities, who are not typically part of the Western canon so to speak. In particular, she is increasingly interested in the figure of the suffering woman in these transnational novels and how they are alternatingly silenced or given voice.

“Many of the texts or novels that I read include a sort of central figure, a female figure of suffering, and oftentimes that suffering female is a metaphor… for war or an assault on national sovereignty,” she furthers. “The body politic is often imagined as a feminine one. When it is invaded, for example, we map that on to violence against women and things like that. So that is very interesting to me.”

The road to research funding has always been competitive and while motivated by her research questions, Tan’s work, has, in turn, also undeniably been influenced by the availability of funding. “I think a lot of my research and the writing that comes from it was enabled and inflected by my travels, done on the auspices of the various grants I was able to get. You need to find a way in order to continue doing the work, and I had to look outside all the time.”

“That’s how I ended up in Tokyo and Shanghai,” she explains. “In going there, I was able to see these novels or these historical moments in a different light, or understand them in a way that I might not have otherwise understood.”

Tan is also committed to research on climate fiction with a focus on ecocriticism. “This is a field in which people engage with the climate or what is happening at the planetary and ecological levels. Eco-feminism is part of this as well, how the feminist project can and should be integrated with the enterprise of addressing our relationship with the planet.”

For those who envision a career in literature, Tan advises, “Work on things that you are interested in. Be generous with yourself and your friends and be open to learning from others and also not to rush.”

The idea of a PhD is an attractive one to many students but if you get a choice between taking a gap year or going straight on with a doctorate degree, she leans toward the former. “Nobody regrets taking a gap year, they only ever regret not taking one.”

“A PhD is about passion, but it is also more of a marathon that requires a lot of stamina. Many of the people who finish the programme aren’t necessarily the most brilliant but those who can stick it out.”