# Xiaofan Amy Li, "The Aesthetics of Risk in Franco-East Asian Literatures" (Cambridge UP, 2026) Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-literary-studies-1048453/xiaofan-amy-li-the-aesthetics-of-risk-in-franco-east-asian-literatures-cambridge-up-2026 Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-literary-studies-1048453/xiaofan-amy-li-the-aesthetics-of-risk-in-franco-east-asian-literatures-cambridge-up-2026.md Podcast: [New Books in Literary Studies](https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-literary-studies-1048453) Published: 2026-08-15T08:00:00+00:00 Episode link: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/NBNK6477010557.mp3 Audio file: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/NBNK6477010557.mp3 Processing state: not_requested JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/new-books-in-literary-studies-1048453/episodes/xiaofan-amy-li-the-aesthetics-of-risk-in-franco-east-asian-literatures-cambridge-up-2026 Duration seconds: 3056 ## Resource The Aesthetics of Risk in Franco-East Asian Literatures (Cambridge UP, 2026) is the first book that examines the concept of risk in non-anglophone world literature. Focusing on how risk is produced and reshaped by literary aesthetics, Li argues that risk is a creative rather than negative force in world literature. Instead of disaster narratives, Li approaches risk from the fresh perspective of ludic aesthetics, or playful, gamelike, illusionistic and experimental literary strategies. Comparatively analysing an original selection of texts by modern and contemporary French-Francophone and East Asian writers, each chapter focuses on a particular genre such as the novel, life-writing, poetry, and image-texts. The reimagination of risk in literature is revealed to be closely related to different forms of play such as structured games, masquerade, poetic and intermedial experimentation. Franco-East Asian literatures help us rethink risk in linguistically diverse and cross-cultural contexts, providing a new paradigm for comparative criticism and world literature. Guest Xiaofan Amy Li is Associate Professor in Comparative Cultural Studies at University College London and holds a PhD in French from Queens' College, Cambridge. Her research spans comparisons and exchanges from the 20th-21st centuries between France, China, and East Asia broadly speaking. Her first monograph Comparative Encounters between Artaud, Michaux and the Zhuangzi (Legenda, 2015) re-reads two avant-garde French writers and the imaginative classical Chinese text Zhuangzi through their intertextual, poetic, and conceptual dialogues. Besides her two monographs, she has published extensively on Surrealism, poetry, and literary translation. She is a member of the AIL… ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/new-books-in-literary-studies-1048453/episodes/xiaofan-amy-li-the-aesthetics-of-risk-in-franco-east-asian-literatures-cambridge-up-2026/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-literary-studies-1048453/xiaofan-amy-li-the-aesthetics-of-risk-in-franco-east-asian-literatures-cambridge-up-2026.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.