Steven Yao, the Edmund A. LeFevre Professor of Literature, has published the lead essay in the most recent edition (Vol. 3 No. 1) of the scholarly journal, Verge: Studies in Global Asias.
Titled "Oceanic Etymologies: Shanghai and the Transpacific Routes of Modernity," Yao's essay follows the historical itinerary of the internationalized signifier “Shanghai” around the terrain of the Pacific Rim. As he shows, over the last 150 years or so “Shanghai” has achieved the status of a figure that condenses the intuited but as yet not fully decipherable flows of transnational commerce and migration accompanying the rise of modernity.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press, Verge: Studies in Global Asias was awarded the 2016 CELJ Best New Journal Award at the 2017 Modern Language Association conference in Philadelphia.