Huiyun Mo, BA, MA

Profile

Cloning-themed YA literature raises key issues regarding the essence of (post-)humanity and the biopolitical management of posthuman childhood. I will examine and compare child-clones’ lives portrayed in ten Young Adult (YA) speculative fictional works from China, Japan, Thailand, the UK and the US. Theories of posthumanism and biopolitics will be applied to explore the representation of the lived experience of cloned children, including the asexual reproductive process, their rearing and bildung, their identity construction, and the autonomy of their bodies.

Spanning across a range of media including literature, manga, anime, and film, these works will be examined in terms of their forms of story-telling, and will be discussed together with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which will serve as an overarching intertext.

I hold an MA in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literary Studies from Durham University, UK and a BA in English Language and Literature from Northeast Normal University, China.

Supervisors: Professor Kiera Vaclavik and Dr Shital Pravinchandra

Research