Dr. Tingting Hui is an Assistant Professor at Leiden University, specializing in critical theory, contemporary literature and arts, and the philosophy of language. Her research spans diverse areas, including care ethics, multilingualism, and translation theory. She has received multiple awards, such as the Justice Equity Diversity and Inclusion Fund (2023) and the Horst Frenz Prize (2019). In addition to her academic work, Tingting has contributed to the development of the innovative "What's Your Story?" diversity card game, which fosters intercultural dialogue. She is currently working on a project that explores how literature redefines concepts like care, empathy, and grief, while offering insight into life's transitions and addressing the ethical question of what constitutes a good life.

More information about Tingting Hui

Fields of interest

• Contemporary literature and arts
• Critical theory
• Philosophy of language

Research

 I am currently engaged in a research project that examines the representation and exploration of care, empathy, and grief in literary texts. This project seeks to investigate not only how literature can challenge and reshape our conceptual understanding of these experiences, but also its capacity to mediate existential questions surrounding life transitions and the pursuit of a meaningful existence. By analyzing literary works, I aim to illuminate the ethical and philosophical dimensions of literature’s role in shaping responses to fundamental human concerns, particularly in relation to the question, “What constitutes a good life?”

My PhD project explores and disentangles the relationship between language and body. I close-read a series of theoretical, philosophical, and literary texts that dramatize or reflect on the implications of speaking with an accent. I propose that the figure of the accent holds the key to rethinking literature as the invention of a singular voice which mobilized and entices the body. Because accent, with its distinctive melody and intonation, persistently draws one’s attention to a vocalizing mouth that swallows and drops, such an image gives rise to a dramatic scene of speaking, which puts literature face to face with a primitive and regressive force of consumption and absorption. Whereas the ideal of the literary voice is often upheld as pure, sublime, and without accent, the image of a “flawed” body – mouth open, tongue loose, voice tampered with an odd and foreign accent – keeps coming back in literary works.

Curriculum vitae

2020 Ph.D. in Literary and Cultural Studies, Leiden University, the Netherlands

2014 M.A. cum laude in Media Studies: Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, Leiden University, the Netherlands

2012 B.A. in Teaching Chinese as a Second Language (TCSL), Northwest University, China

Teaching activities

Film and Literary Studies (BA)
International Studies (BA)
Media Studies (MA)
Cultural Analysis: Literature and Theory (MA)

Grants and awards

2023 Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion fund (Leiden University)

2019 Honourable Mention of the 2019 Horst Frenz Prize, American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA)

2016 Young Scholars Excellence Award, the Society for Multi-Ethnic Studies (MESEA)

2015 Ph.D. Fellowship, awarded by Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis (NICA)

Selected publications

T. Hui. “Aesthetics of Care: Caring for the Mother with Chantal Akerman.” Humanities 13.3 (2024), 79. (Open Access)

T. Hui. “Speaking while Eating, and Vice Versa.” The Decadent Review, 2020.

T. Hui. “Performing Failure: Rethinking the Strategic Value of Translation.” Third Text 33.2 (2019), 235-246. (Open Access)