Jenny Fu is a senior in the College of Arts & Sciences double majoring in English and Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE). Her experiences living in China, Canada, and the U.S. fostered her interest in cross-cultural interaction and contributed to her passion for English and Chinese literature. Her research interests include 19th and 20th century literature, poetry and poetics, globalization, East-West contact, and translation. Her work in the Wolf Humanities Fellowship and the English Honors Program situates Romantic prose and poetry in the context of 19th-century Sino-British contact. Tracing opium as a historical commodity and literary symbol, she aims to explore the intersection of literature, politics, and culture in her project. Outside of the classroom, Jenny is involved in Penn Six A Cappella and the English Undergraduate Advisory Board. She also enjoys reading, creative writing, and taking long walks outdoors.
Ning Ning (Jenny) Fu
Wolf Humanities Center Undergraduate Fellow
2024—2025 Forum on Keywords
Ning Ning (Jenny) Fu
English; Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE)
Britain's Informal Empire in China: Opium and the Reconstruction of "the Orient" in Romantic Literature
This project examines the Malay figure in Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821) as a fictional rendition of Lascars or Asiatic sailors that traversed through Britain between 1794 and 1814. In doing so, I take particular interest in the text’s engagement with global connections enabled by Britain’s maritime commerce–the availability of “Oriental” commodities such as tea and opium, news of merchant ships trading these goods across the Indian and Atlantic oceans, as well as regular encounters with “Oriental” laborers who arrived in England working on these vessels were the rudimentary experiences that constituted British life and informed De Quincey’s writing of Confessions. I examine how De Quincey recreates the Malay figure as a Lascar sailor, reconfigures the experience of maritime labor itself, and responds to Britain’s status as an ascendant maritime power.