Bio

Before coming to Stanford in 2009, Haiyan Lee taught at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Hong Kong, and held post-doctoral fellowships at Cornell University and Harvard University. Her first book, _Revolution of the Heart: A Genealogy of Love in China, 1900-1950_, is a critical genealogy of the idea of “love” (qing) in modern Chinese literary and cultural history. It is the first recipient of the Joseph Levenson Prize in the field of modern Chinese literature. Her second book, _The Stranger and the Chinese Moral Imagination_, examines how the figure of “the stranger”—foreigner, migrant, class enemy, woman, animal, ghost—in Chinese fiction, film, television, and exhibition culture tests the moral limits of a society known for the primacy of consanguinity and familiarity. Her new project centers on Chinese visions of “justice” at the intersection of narrative, law, and ethics. In 2015-16 she received a Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies which supported her residency at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. For more about her work, see “Social Science Research Council (SSRC): New Voices,” “Stanford Report: The Human Experience Feature Story,” and "Stanford Humanities Center Research News."

Academic Appointments

  • Professor, East Asian Languages and Cultures
  • Professor, Comparative Literature

Honors & Awards

  • Ellen Andrews Wright Fellowship, Stanford Humanities Center (2019-2020)
  • Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies (2015-2016)
  • Joseph Levenson Book Prize, The Association for Asian Studies (2009)
  • An Wang Postdoctoral Fellowship, John K. Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University (2006-2007)
  • Eugene M. Kayden Manuscript Prize, University of Colorado (2005)
  • Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in comparative literature, Cornell Society for the Humanities (2002-2003)
  • Committee on Scholarly Communication with China (CSCC) Graduate Fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies (1998-1999)

Boards, Advisory Committees, Professional Organizations

  • Chair, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures (2020 - Present)
  • Editorial board member, Modern China (2019 - Present)
  • Member of the Annual Meeting Program Committee, Modern Language Association of America (2018 - Present)
  • Elected member of the Modern and Contemporary Chinese LLC (Languages, Literatures, and Cultures) Forum Executive Committee, Modern Language Association of America (2017 - Present)
  • Editorial board member, Journal of World Literature (2015 - Present)
  • Editorial board member and associate editor, Journal of Asian Studies (2012 - 2015)
  • Elected member of the China and Inner Asia Council, Association for Asian Studies (2012 - 2015)
  • Editorial board member, Chinese Literature Today (2010 - Present)
  • Consultant and jury coordinator of the inaugural Newman Prize for Chinese Literature, World Literature Today and the Institute for US-China Issues, University of Oklahoma (2008 - 2009)
  • Member of the Annual Meeting Program Committee, Association for Asian Studies (2007 - 2009)

Program Affiliations

  • Center for East Asian Studies
  • Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
  • Philosophy and Literature

Professional Education

  • B.A., Peking University, Philosophy and Religious Studies (1990)
  • M.A., University of Chicago, East Asian Languages and Civilizations (1994)
  • Ph.D., Cornell University, East Asian Literature (2002)

Contact

  • Academic
    haiyan@stanford.edu
    University - Faculty Department: East Asian Languages and Cultures Position: Professor
    • 315 Knight Bldg
    • 521 Memorial Way
    • East Asian Languages & Cultures
    • Stanford,  California  94305-2000 
    University - Faculty Department: Comparative Literature Position: Professor

Additional Info

  • Mail Code: 2000

Current Research and Scholarly Interests

Modern Chinese literature and popular culture; philosophy and literature; law and literature; cognitive science; affect studies; cultural studies of gender, sexuality, race, and religion; human-animal relations and environmental humanities

My current project is titled "A Certain Justice: Toward an Ecology of the Chinese Legal Imagination." It is a book-length study of the Chinese legal imagination pivoted on the idea of justice as a juridical, ethical, aesthetic, ecological, and cosmological concept. It sets out to make sense of the contradictions and paradoxes that course through verbal and visual narratives about good and evil, crime and punishment, guilt and responsibility.

I examine a variety of texts ranging from traditional courtroom drama to modern spy thriller and film noir. The basic questions that drive my inquiry are: How has justice been envisioned and pursued in Chinese culture and society, from dynastic times to the new millennium? Does “liberty and justice for all” occupy the same place in the Chinese legal imagination as it does in modern liberal democracies? I situate the social imaginary of law, morality, and justice at the intersection of literary genre studies, critical legal studies, moral and political philosophy, and cognitive psychology. Aiming to make an original contribution to the interdisciplinary field of law and humanities, I structure my investigation around a central dichotomy: high justice and low justice.

See a Q&A on my research at Stanford Humanities Center Research News: https://shc.stanford.edu/news/stories/why-chinese-spies-don’t-fall-love

2020-21 Courses

Stanford Advisees

All Publications

  • The Stranger and the Chinese Moral Imagination Lee, H. Stanford University Press. 2014
  • Revolution of the Heart: A Genealogy of Love in China, 1900-1950 Lee, H. Stanford University Press. 2007
  • Review of How Things Count as the Same: Memory, Mimesis, and Metaphor by Adam B. Seligman and Robert P. Weller (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019) Critical Inquiry Lee, H. 2020
  • Latour, Tiananmen, and Glass Slippers; or, What Do We Talk about When We Talk about Chinese Studies? Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature Lee, H. 2020; 17 (2)
  • A Sino-Jewish Encounter, A Humanitarian Fantasy Verge: Studies in Global Asias Lee, H. 2020; 6 (1): 142-167

    View details for DOI 10.5749/vergstudglobasia.6.1.0168

  • Measuring the Stomach of a Gentleman with the Heart-Mind of a Pipsqueak: On the Utility and Ubiquity of Theory of Mind in Literature, Mostly Poetics Today Lee, H. 2020; 41 (2)
  • Déjà Vu: Revisiting Hu Fayun’s SARS Novel during the 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic Lee, H. MCLC Resource Center Publication. Ohio State University. 2020
  • When Nothing Is True, Everything Is Possible: On Truth and Power by Way of Socialist Realism PMLA-PUBLICATIONS OF THE MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA Lee, H. 2019; 134 (5): 1157–64

    View details for Web of Science ID 000493859100017

  • The Silence of Animals: Writing on the Edge of Anthropomorphism in Contemporary Chinese Literature ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment Lee, H. 2019; 26 (1): 145-164

    View details for DOI 10.1093/isle/isy080

  • The Lives and Troubles of Others Mouse v. Cat in Chinese Literature Idema, W. L. University of Washington Press. 2019: vii-xiv
  • Through Thick and Thin: The Romance of the Species in the Anthropocene International Communication of Chinese Culture Lee, H. 2018; 5 (1-2): 145-172

    View details for DOI 10.1007/s40636-017-0111-4

  • Review of The Spatiality of Emotion in Early Modern China: From Dreamscapes to Theatricality by Ling Hon Lam (Columbia University Press, 2018) Lee, H. Modern Chinese Literature and Culture Resource Center. 2018
  • Charlie Chan and the Orientalist Exception ASIA-PACIFIC JOURNAL-JAPAN FOCUS Lee, H. 2017; 15 (4)

    View details for Web of Science ID 000418000700005

  • Revolution and Love A New Literary History of Modern China Lee, H. edited by Wang, D. Harvard University Press. 2017: 231–236
  • Monsters to Die For: On Monster Hunt as a Ecological Fable Lee, H. Association for Chinese Animation Studies. Hong Kong. 2017
  • Review of _The Age of Irreverence: A New History of Laughter in China_ by Christopher Rea (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015) Lee, H. Chinese Literature Today. University of Oklahoma. 2017
  • How the Chinese Fell in Love with Love, Caveats and All: Review of _When True Love Came to China_ By Lynn Pan (Hong Kong University Press, 2015) Lee, H. MCLC Resource Center. Ohio State University. 2017
  • The Rise and Fall (and Rise again) of Vernacular Happiness Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese Lee, H. 2017; 14 (1): 89-122
  • The Soft Power of the Constant Soldier; or, Why We Should Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the PLA Chinese Visions of World Order: Tianxia, Culture, and World Politics Lee, H. edited by Wang, B. Duke University Press. 2017: 237–266
  • Mao’s Two Bodies: On the Curious (Political) Art of Impersonating the Great Helmsman Red Legacies in China: Cultural Afterlives of the Communist Revolution Lee, H. edited by Li, J., Zhang, E. Harvard University Asia Center Publications. 2016
  • ’Two Wongs Can Make It White’: Charlie Chan and the Orientalist Exception. Transnational Asia Lee, H. 2016; 1 (1)

    View details for DOI 10.25613/x47b-h268

  • Chinese Paw-litics, Anyone? Lee, H. China Policy Institute, University of Nottingham. 2016
  • Guns, Fairy Tales, and Red Guards Lee, H. Parlio.com. 2016
  • Chinese Feelings: Notes on a Ritual Theory of Emotion The Wenshan Review of Literature and Culture Lee, H. 2016; 9 (2): 1-37
  • Review of _Literature the People Love: Reading Chinese Texts from the Early Maoist Period (1949-1966)_ by Krista Van Fleit Hang (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013) Lee, H. Journal of Asian Studies. 2015
  • Figuring History and Horror in a Provincial Museum: The Water Dungeon, the Rent Collection Courtyard, and the Socialist Undead The Challenge of Linear Time: Nationhood and the Politics of History in East Asia Lee, H. edited by Murthy, V., Schneider, A. Brill. 2014: 215–254
  • Woman, Sacrifice, and the Limits of Sympathy Frontiers of Literary Studies in China Lee, H. 2012; 6 (2): 184-197
  • The Ruins of Yuanmingyuan; Or, How to Enjoy a National Wound Places of Memory in Modern China: History, Politics, and Identity Lee, H. edited by Matten, M. A. Brill. 2012: 193–232
  • The Charisma of Power and the Military Sublime in Tiananmen Square JOURNAL OF ASIAN STUDIES Lee, H. 2011; 70 (2): 397-424

    View details for DOI 10.1017/S0021911811000040

    View details for Web of Science ID 000292473500007

  • From the Iron Rice Bowl to the Beggar's Bowl: What Good Is (Chinese) Literature? TELOS Lee, H. 2010: 129-149

    View details for Web of Science ID 000284805200007

  • Enemy under My Skin: Eileen Chang's Lust, Caution and the Politics of Transcendence PMLA-PUBLICATIONS OF THE MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA Lee, H. 2010; 125 (3): 640-?

    View details for Web of Science ID 000280898500008

  • Nowhere in the World does There Exist Love or Hatred without Reason Words and Their Stories: Essays on the Language of the Chinese Revolution Lee, H. edited by Wang, B. Brill. 2010: 149–170
  • The Ruins of Yuanmingyuan Or, How to Enjoy a National Wound MODERN CHINA Lee, H. 2009; 35 (2): 155-190

    View details for DOI 10.1177/0097700408326911

    View details for Web of Science ID 000263364100002

  • Brought to You by the People’s Republic of The Onion China Beat Lee, H. 2009
  • It’s Right to Party, en Masse China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance Lee, H. edited by Merkel-Hess, K., Pomeranz, K., Wasserstrom, J. Rowman and Littlefield. 2009: 173–177
  • Kung Fu Panda, Go Home! China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance Lee, H. edited by Merkel-Hess, K., Pomeranz, K., Wasserstrom, J. Rowman and Littlefield. 2009: 241–245
  • Mo Yan, Inaugural Newman Laureate, Honored in Oklahoma China Beat Lee, H. 2009
  • Painted Skin: To Scare or Not to Scare? China Beat Lee, H. 2008
  • Woman, Demon, Human: The Spectral Journey Home Chinese Films in Focus II Lee, H. edited by Berry, C. BFI Publishing. 2008; 2nd edition: 243–249
  • Meng Jiang Nü and the May Fourth Folklore Movement Meng Jiangnu Brings down the Great Wall: Ten Versions of a Chinese Legend Lee, H. University of Washington Press. 2008: 24–41
  • Taking It to Heart: Emotion, Modernity, Asia Positions: asia critique Lee, H. 2008; 16 (2)
  • The Lord of the Wolves? China Beat Lee, H. 2008
  • Kung Fu Panda, Go Home! China Beat Lee, H. 2008
  • The Right to Party, en Masse. China Beat Lee, H. 2008
  • The Other Chinese: Romancing the Folk in May Fourth Native Soil Fiction Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies Lee, H. 2007; 33 (2): 9-34
  • Review of _The Clash of Empires: The Invention of China in Modern World Making_ by Lydia H. Liu (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004) Lee, H. The China Journal. 2007
  • Eileen Chang’s Poetics of the Social: Review of _Love in a Fallen City_ By Eileen Chang (New York Review of Books Classics, 2006) Lee, H. 2007
  • Review of _China on Screen: Cinema and Nation_ by Chris Berry and Mary Farquhar (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006) Lee, H. Nations and Nationalism. 2007
  • 'A Dime Store of Words': The Liberty Magazine and the Cultural Logic of the Popular Press Twentieth-Century China Lee, H. 2007; 33 (1): 53-80
  • Nannies for foreigners: The enchantment of Chinese womanhood in the age of millennial capitalism Workshop on the Art and Politics of East Asia Lee, H. DUKE UNIV PRESS. 2006: 507–29

    View details for DOI 10.1215/08992363-2006-017

    View details for Web of Science ID 000241247400006

  • Governmentality and the aesthetic state: A Chinese fantasia Symposium on Problem of Public Intellectuals Lee, H. DUKE UNIV PRESS. 2006: 99–129

    View details for Web of Science ID 000238427900005

  • The Book and the Sword: China and the U.S. in the Global Classroom Teaching China in the American Classroom: Personal Reflections of Chinese Scholars in the U.S. Lee, H. edited by Ban, W., Xueping, Z. Nanjing University Press. 2006
  • From Abroad, with Love: Transnational Texts, Local Critiques Tamkang Review Lee, H. 2006; 36 (4): 185-225
  • Tears that crumbled the great wall: The archaeology of feeling in the may fourth folklore movement Annual Meeting of the Assoication-for-Asian-Studies Lee, H. Y. CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS. 2005: 35–65

    View details for Web of Science ID 000228464300002

  • Review of _Revolution Plus Love: Literary History, Women’s Bodies, and Thematic Repetition in Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction_ by Jianmei Liu (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2003) Lee, H. 2005
  • Sympathy, Hypocrisy, and the Trauma of Chineseness Modern Chinese Literature and Culture Lee, H. 2004; 16 (2): 76-122
  • Review of _Holding Up Half the Sky: Chinese Women Past, Present, and Future_ ed. by Tao Jie, Zheng Bijun & Shirley L. Mow (New York: The Feminist Press, 2004) Lee, H. Journal of the American Oriental Society. 2004
  • All the feelings that are fit to print - The community of sentiment and the literary public sphere in China, 1900-1918 50th Annual Meeting of the Association-for-Asian-Studies LEE, H. SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC. 2001: 291–327

    View details for Web of Science ID 000169336500001

    View details for PubMedID 18323031

  • Love or Lust? The Sentimental Self in Honglou meng Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews Lee, H. 1997; 19: 58-111