Global France Seminar presents, Subha Xavier “From Opium to Fentanyl Wars: China in the Western Imaginary”

Associate Professor of French and African Studies at Emory University

Abstract: This talk will consider how China has been imagined by the Western imaginary since the Opium wars of the last century, especially in France, and how Sino-French immigrant writers and artists have responded to this misrepresentation over the years. Examining how empires rise and fall, and the role of fantasy and opioids in political strategy and literary representation, this presentation will argue for a longue durée approach to where China and France collude and collide in the migrant imaginary.

Bio: Subha Xavier is Associate Professor of French and African Studies at Emory University. She is author of The Migrant Text: Making and Marketing a Global French Literature and forthcoming work on Sino-French Literary Exchange. She is a specialist of global French, with articles and essays on migrant writing and film in journals in several languages.

09/24/2025 Mohamed Amer Meziane (Brown University). “How the Fall of Heaven Overturned the Earth: Empire, Capital and the Secularocene” (MIT Hayden Library 14S-110 @ 5:15pm)
10/27/2025 Subha Xavier (Emory University). “From Opium to Fentanyl Wars: China in the Western Imaginary” (MIT 14E-304 @ 5:15pm)
11/19/2025 Tamara Chaplin (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign). Becoming Lesbian (MIT 14N-112 @ 5:15pm)
12/2/2025 Keith Baker (Stanford University). Jean-Paul Marat. Prophet of Terror. (MIT-TBD @ 5pm)
12/3/2025 Judith Miller (New York University). “Thinking About African Francophone Theatre” (14E-304 @ 5:15pm)