Abstract:The English publications in 2014 - 2015 manifest that life writing studies are in a multiple pattern at present time. The interdisciplinary concept that life writing studies twenty years ago adopted is developed into the concept of TRANSIT. Under this umbrella, life writing studies break through the old frame and move into a realm that is not only interdisciplinary but also closely associates with the life in which we live. Life writing studies, by embracing the world, show concern over the countries and regions that were scarcely studied, or the genres that few studies touched upon in the past, for instance, the occupied Palestine, or TV reality shows. Traditional studies still exist, with the foci on feminism, post-colonialism, identity, memory, and so on. Biography remains an approach in certain area such as musicality, science, and etc.

Key words: life writing studies; transit; tradition; approach

Dr.Tang Xiumin is Professor and part-time Researcher at the Center for Life Writing, SJTU. Her research interest is life writing studies and literature studies. She is author of Lytton Strachey and “the New Biography”: A Study from the Cultural and Historical Perspective (2010) and co-author of A History of English Biography (2012). The former was granted a third prize awarded by Social Science Committee of Jiangsu Province while the latter appeared in the list of “Top 100 in 2012 ” by Chinese Reading Gazette. She directed the State-Sponsored Research Project “The History of English Life Writing” (IN: 07BWW13) and is now on the team of the State-Sponsored Major Project “Compilation and Research of Overseas Life writing on Modern Chinese People ”(IN: 11&ZD138) .