2023/ 2024 King Juan Carlos I Chair in Spanish Culture And Civilization
Quan Zhou
Quan Zhou is a multifaceted self-taught artist, author, communicator, podcaster, graphic novelist, and specialist in social issues communication. She pursued her studies in Madrid and graduated in England in Graphic Communication. Her career in graphic novels began in 2015 with the publication of Gazpacho agridulce: Una autobiografía chino-andaluza, released by Astiberri. With that book, she became a pioneer in writing about the lives of children of immigrants in Spain. She continued her narrative journey with the sequel Andaluchinas por el mundo in 2017. In 2018, she collaborated with Nuria Labari to create El gran libro de los niños extraordinarios, published under the Silonia imprint. She ventured into graphic essays with Gente de aquí y Gente de allí in 2020, and in 2023, she returned to Astiberri to publish La Agridolce Vita.
She contributes articles and comic strips to Eldiario.es and Vogue, and has also written and illustrated for Píkara Magazine, El País & Eldiario. She hosts the podcast "Movidas Varias," produced by Plan H Media and distributed by Eldiario.es, which serves as a platform for voices from minority communities.
She has collaborated with numerous American universities as an artist-in-residence or guest speaker, including Cornell University, Boston College, Bryn Mawr College, Rutgers University, among others.
Moreover, she regularly engages in lectures about racism, identity, and cultural hybridization in Spain, the United States, the United Kingdom, Colombia, Sweden, China, and Taiwan, showcasing her commitment to addressing social issues and promoting cultural understanding.
Listen to Quan Zhou podcast's here
Scholarly essays about Quan Zhou ’s work have appeared in the Hispanic Journal, Spanish Graphic Narratives: Recent Developments in Sequential Art (Palgrave, 2020), and The Routledge Companion to Gender and Sexuality in Comic Book Studies (Routledge, 2020).
Describing her plans for her time as KJC Chair at NYU, Quan explains:
“Spain was perceived by those living in the country as a non-racialized territory until relatively recently. Now, new voices have arisen. Living and existing in a society that did not consider their racialization much, I bring that perspective to the public program and the seminar that I will lead at NYU. This perspective is intimately interlinked with my experience as an artist and activist but moreover as an Asian decent person that was born and raised in Spain, from the visibilization of strong minority voices that today fight their way into Spain to the power dynamics existing on what is considered artistic periferia and mainstream. My aim is to explore these ideas within the context of multicultural New York City.
Furthermore, given that New York is home to the second oldest Chinatown in the United States, and considering the country's pioneering role in mainstream media representation of the Chinese diaspora, I have observed and experienced how Spain has adopted stereotypes of Chinese people prevalent in the U.S. My aim is also to connect with the Chinese diaspora to deepen my understanding of its influence on our identities and to foster cooperation between diasporas.”
Watch Zhou's TED Talk
During her stay at KJCC in Spring 2024, she will teach the team taught graduate seminar with Jordana Mendelson on “Diversidad y arte en España, desde sus periferias” on Wednesdays, from 2: 45 pm - 4:45 pm.
Graduate Seminar 2024
