Haiyan Lee
Walter A. Haas Professor of the Humanities and Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures and of Comparative Literature
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 book, _A Certain Justice: Toward an Ecology of the Chinese Legal Imagination_ investigates Chinese visions of “justice” at the intersection of narrative, law, and ethics. 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
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Professor, East Asian Languages and Cultures
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Professor, Comparative Literature
Administrative Appointments
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Chair, East Asian Languages and Cultures (2020 - Present)
Honors & Awards
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Humanities Seed Grant, Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences (2023-2025)
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William and Dorothy Kaye University Fellow in Undergraduate Education, Stanford University (2022-2027)
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Ellen Andrews Wright Fellowship, Stanford Humanities Center (2019-2020)
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Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies (2015-2016)
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Residential fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (2015-2016)
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Joseph Levenson Book Prize, The Association for Asian Studies (2009)
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An Wang Postdoctoral Fellowship, John K. Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University (2006-2007)
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Eugene M. Kayden Manuscript Prize, University of Colorado (2005)
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Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in comparative literature, Cornell Society for the Humanities (2002-2003)
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Committee on Scholarly Communication with China (CSCC) Graduate Fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies (1998-1999)
Boards, Advisory Committees, Professional Organizations
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Member of the TC Cognitive and Affect Studies Forum Executive Committee, Modern Language Association of America (2024 - Present)
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Member of the Annual Meeting Program Committee, Modern Language Association of America (2018 - 2021)
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Elected member of the Modern and Contemporary Chinese LLC Forum Executive Committee, Modern Language Association of America (2017 - 2022)
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Editorial board member and associate editor, Journal of Asian Studies (2012 - 2015)
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Elected member of the China and Inner Asia Council, Association for Asian Studies (2012 - 2015)
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Editorial board member, Journal of Posthumanism, Modern China, Journal of World Literature, Chinese Literature Today (2010 - Present)
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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)
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Member of the Annual Meeting Program Committee, Association for Asian Studies (2007 - 2009)
Program Affiliations
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Center for East Asian Studies
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Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
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Modern Thought and Literature
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Philosophy and Literature
Professional Education
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B.A., Peking University, Philosophy and Religious Studies (1990)
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M.A., University of Chicago, East Asian Languages and Civilizations (1994)
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Ph.D., Cornell University, East Asian Literature (2002)
Current Research and Scholarly Interests
Research 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 new book, titled "A Certain Justice: Toward an Ecology of the Chinese Legal Imagination," is the first book-length study of the Chinese legal imagination pivoted on the idea of justice as a juridical, ethical, aesthetic, ecological, and cosmological concept. See https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo192888789.html
BOOK ABSTRACT:
China has an image as a realm of Oriental despotism where law is at best window-dressing and at worst an instrument of coercion and tyranny. The rule of law seems an elusive ideal in the face of entrenched obstacles baked, as it were, into China’s cultural and political DNA. In this highly original contribution to the interdisciplinary field of law and humanities, Haiyan Lee contends that this image arises from an ahistorical understanding of China’s political-legal culture, particularly the failure to distinguish what she calls high justice and low justice.
In the Chinese legal imagination, Lee shows, justice is a vertical concept, with low justice between individuals firmly subordinated to the high justice of the state. Lee’s book uses high and low justice as the organizing concepts to make sense of a political-legal culture that is marked by a mistrust of law’s ability to deliver justice and a privileging of substantive over procedural justice. Lee illustrates the hierarchy of high and low justice with an array of justice narratives, from spy thrillers that enchant the state to tales of not playing fair, from reformation of war criminals to mice suing cats in underworld courts.
By bringing stories about crime and punishment, subterfuge and exposé, guilt and redemption from a non-liberal tradition into conversation with moral, political, and legal philosophy, A Certain Justice helps us recognize the fight for justice outside the familiar arenas of liberal democracy and in terms other than those furnished by the rule of law.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Introduction
High Justice and Low Justice
Law and Chinese Literature
Law and Morality
Chinese Justice between Law and Morality
“Harmony above Justice”
Chapter Outline
Chapter 1. High Justice
“The Center Cannot Hold”
“Every Country Has Its Secrets”
“Society Must Be Defended”
Chapter 2. Low Justice
Everybody Is a Hypocrite
Pseudo-Virtue and Pseudo-Vice
Communist Antihypocrisy
Performing the Socialist Public Transcript
Everybody Is a Cynic
The Community of Complicity
Chapter 3. Transitional Justice
Revolutionary Justice: Trying the Remote Past (and Future)
Bureaucratic Justice: Trying the Immediate Past (and Future)
Socialist Rule of Law: Trying the Present
We Have Always Been Just
Chapter 4. Exceptional Justice
Devils to Men
Foes to Friends
Excursus: A Translingual History of Brainwashing
Chapter 5. Poetic Justice
The Magic of Collective Action
The Magic of Multiple Worlds
The Magic of Fiction
Chapter 6. Multispecies Justice
The Trophic Order and the Moral Order
A Wrinkle in the Universe
Public Things
The Tibetan Mastiff
The Stolen Bicycle and A Grassland Zoo
The Chinese Tiger
Ecological High and Low Justice
Conclusion
A Larger Loyalty, a Higher Loyalty
Horizontal Justice, Vertical Justice
What Does Qiuju Want?
A Certain 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
Watch my lecture at the University of Notre Dame titled "A Murder in Manchuria": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfo-3_4yxEA
2024-25 Courses
- Survey in Sinophone Literature
CHINA 380 (Win) - Where the Wild Things Are: The Ecology and Ethics of Conserving Megafauna
BIO 185, DLCL 170, EALC 170, EARTHSYS 170, GLOBAL 170 (Win) -
Independent Studies (10)
- Graduate Directed Reading
EASTASN 300 (Aut, Win, Spr) - Honors Thesis Oral Presentation
DLCL 199 (Spr) - Honors Thesis Seminar
DLCL 189B (Win) - Honors Thesis Seminar
DLCL 189C (Spr) - Independent Research
COMPLIT 194 (Aut, Win, Spr) - Individual Studies in East Asian Languages and Cultures (Graduate)
EALC 200 (Aut, Win, Spr) - Individual Studies in East Asian Languages and Cultures (Undergraduate)
EALC 199 (Aut, Win, Spr) - Master's Thesis or Qualifying Paper
EALC 299 (Aut, Win, Spr) - Senior Research (Capstone Essay)
EALC 198C (Aut, Win, Spr) - Senior Research (Honors Thesis)
EALC 198H (Aut, Win, Spr)
- Graduate Directed Reading
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Prior Year Courses
2023-24 Courses
- The Cult of Happiness: Pursuing the Good Life in America and China
CHINA 10SC, COMPLIT 10SC (Sum) - The Novel
COMPLIT 123 (Spr) - Where the Wild Things Are: The Ecology and Ethics of Conserving Megafauna
BIO 185, DLCL 170, EALC 170, EARTHSYS 170, GLOBAL 170 (Win) - Why College? Your Education and the Good Life
COLLEGE 101 (Aut)
2022-23 Courses
- East Asian Humanities Workshop I
EALC 211 (Aut) - East Asian Humanities Workshop II
EALC 212 (Win) - East Asian Humanities Workshop III
EALC 213 (Spr) - Modern China Studies: State of the Field
CHINA 288, CHINA 388 (Spr) - Proseminar in East Asian Humanities II: Current Scholarship
EALC 202 (Win) - Survey in Sinophone Literature
CHINA 380 (Aut) - Why College? Your Education and the Good Life
COLLEGE 101 (Aut)
2021-22 Courses
- East Asian Humanities Workshop I
EALC 211 (Aut) - East Asian Humanities Workshop II
EALC 212 (Win) - East Asian Humanities Workshop III
EALC 213 (Spr) - For Love of Country: National Narratives in Chinese Literature and Film
CHINA 279, CHINA 379 (Spr) - Humanities Core: How to be Modern in East Asia
CHINA 24, COMPLIT 44, HUMCORE 133, JAPAN 24, KOREA 24 (Spr) - Proseminar in East Asian Humanities II: Current Scholarship
EALC 202 (Win) - The Cult of Happiness: Pursuing the Good Life in America and China
CHINA 10SC, COMPLIT 10SC (Sum) - Why College? Your Education and the Good Life
COLLEGE 101 (Aut)
- The Cult of Happiness: Pursuing the Good Life in America and China
Stanford Advisees
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Doctoral Dissertation Reader (AC)
Yan Chang -
Doctoral Dissertation Co-Advisor (AC)
Aaron Gilkison, Lingjia Xu, Ting Zheng -
Master's Program Advisor
Yi Jun Lim
All Publications
- A Certain Justice: Toward an Ecology of the Chinese Legal Imagination University of Chicago Press. 2023
- The Stranger and the Chinese Moral Imagination Stanford University Press. 2014
- Revolution of the Heart: A Genealogy of Love in China, 1900-1950 Stanford University Press. 2007
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The Longest Transitional Justice: An Immigrant Scholar Defends Affirmative Action
Arcade: Humanities in the World.
Stanford Humanities Center.
2023
Abstract
In June '23, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down race-conscious affirmative action in college admissions, provoking a range of reactions. In this blog, Haiyan Lee offers a response from the perspective of an immigrant scholar with background in legal humanities and China studies.
Interventions -
The Importance of Not Being Honest
Law and Literature
2023; 35 (2): 201-220
View details for DOI 10.1080/1535685X.2021.1991612
- Apples and Oranges? An Idiosyncratic Comparison of Literature and Anthropology Dibur Literary Journal 2022: 107-119
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Utopian Ruins: A Memorial Museum of the Mao Era (Book Review)
JOURNAL OF ASIAN STUDIES
2021; 80 (4): 1069-1070
View details for DOI 10.1017/S0021911821001728
View details for Web of Science ID 000740791300028
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How Things Count as the Same: Memory, Mimesis, and Metaphor. (Book Review)
CRITICAL INQUIRY
2021; 47 (2): 416
View details for DOI 10.1086/712135
View details for Web of Science ID 000600991800016
- Commentary on "Overnight Urbanization and Changing Spirits Disturbed Ecosystems in Southern Jiangsu" by Robert Weller and Keping Wu Current Anthropology. 2021 ; 62 (5):
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Latour, Tiananmen, and Glass Slippers; or, What We Talk about When We Talk about Chinese Studies
PRISM-THEORY AND MODERN CHINESE LITERATURE
2020; 17 (2): 457-474
View details for DOI 10.1215/25783491-8690444
View details for Web of Science ID 000664100400011
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"Measuring the Stomach of a Gentleman with the Heart-Mind of a Pipsqueak": On the Ubiquity and Utility of Theory of Mind in Literature, Mostly
POETICS TODAY
2020; 41 (2): 205–22
View details for DOI 10.1215/03335372-8172528
View details for Web of Science ID 000579872600003
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A Sino-Jewish Encounter, A Humanitarian Fantasy
Verge: Studies in Global Asias
2020; 6 (1): 142-167
View details for DOI 10.5749/vergstudglobasia.6.1.0168
- Déjà Vu: Revisiting Hu Fayun’s SARS Novel during the 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic MCLC Resource Center Publication. Ohio State University. 2020
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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
2019; 134 (5): 1157–64
View details for Web of Science ID 000493859100017
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The Silence of Animals: Writing on the Edge of Anthropomorphism in Contemporary Chinese Literature
ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment
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 University of Washington Press. 2019: vii-xiv
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Class Feeling
AFTERLIVES OF CHINESE COMMUNISM: POLITICAL CONCEPTS FROM MAO TO XI
2019: 23-+
View details for Web of Science ID 000566136000004
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Through Thick and Thin: The Romance of the Species in the Anthropocene
International Communication of Chinese Culture
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) Modern Chinese Literature and Culture Resource Center. 2018
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Charlie Chan and the Orientalist Exception
ASIA-PACIFIC JOURNAL-JAPAN FOCUS
2017; 15 (4)
View details for Web of Science ID 000418000700005
- Revolution and Love A New Literary History of Modern China edited by Wang, D. Harvard University Press. 2017: 231–236
- Monsters to Die For: On Monster Hunt as a Ecological Fable 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) 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) MCLC Resource Center. Ohio State University. 2017
- The Rise and Fall (and Rise again) of Vernacular Happiness Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 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 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 edited by Li, J., Zhang, E. Harvard University Asia Center Publications. 2016
- Chinese Paw-litics, Anyone? China Policy Institute, University of Nottingham. 2016
- Guns, Fairy Tales, and Red Guards Parlio.com. 2016
- Chinese Feelings: Notes on a Ritual Theory of Emotion The Wenshan Review of Literature and Culture 2016; 9 (2): 1-37
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’Two Wongs Can Make It White’: Charlie Chan and the Orientalist Exception.
Transnational Asia
2016; 1 (1)
View details for DOI 10.25613/x47b-h268
- 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) 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 edited by Murthy, V., Schneider, A. Brill. 2014: 215–254
- Woman, Sacrifice, and the Limits of Sympathy Frontiers of Literary Studies in China 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 edited by Matten, M. A. Brill. 2012: 193–232
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The Charisma of Power and the Military Sublime in Tiananmen Square
JOURNAL OF ASIAN STUDIES
2011; 70 (2): 397-424
View details for DOI 10.1017/S0021911811000040
View details for Web of Science ID 000292473500007
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From the Iron Rice Bowl to the Beggar's Bowl: What Good Is (Chinese) Literature?
TELOS
2010: 129-149
View details for Web of Science ID 000284805200007
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Enemy under My Skin: Eileen Chang's Lust, Caution and the Politics of Transcendence
PMLA-PUBLICATIONS OF THE MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA
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 edited by Wang, B. Brill. 2010: 149–170
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The Ruins of Yuanmingyuan Or, How to Enjoy a National Wound
MODERN CHINA
2009; 35 (2): 155-190
View details for DOI 10.1177/0097700408326911
View details for Web of Science ID 000263364100002
- Kung Fu Panda, Go Home! China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance edited by Merkel-Hess, K., Pomeranz, K., Wasserstrom, J. Rowman and Littlefield. 2009: 241–245
- It’s Right to Party, en Masse China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance edited by Merkel-Hess, K., Pomeranz, K., Wasserstrom, J. Rowman and Littlefield. 2009: 173–177
- Mo Yan, Inaugural Newman Laureate, Honored in Oklahoma China Beat 2009
- Brought to You by the People’s Republic of The Onion China Beat 2009
- Painted Skin: To Scare or Not to Scare? China Beat 2008
- Woman, Demon, Human: The Spectral Journey Home Chinese Films in Focus II 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 University of Washington Press. 2008: 24–41
- The Right to Party, en Masse. China Beat 2008
- Taking It to Heart: Emotion, Modernity, Asia Positions: asia critique 2008; 16 (2)
- The Lord of the Wolves? China Beat 2008
- Kung Fu Panda, Go Home! China Beat 2008
- The Other Chinese: Romancing the Folk in May Fourth Native Soil Fiction Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies 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) 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) 2007
- Review of _China on Screen: Cinema and Nation_ by Chris Berry and Mary Farquhar (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006) Nations and Nationalism. 2007
- 'A Dime Store of Words': The Liberty Magazine and the Cultural Logic of the Popular Press Twentieth-Century China 2007; 33 (1): 53-80
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Nannies for foreigners: The enchantment of Chinese womanhood in the age of millennial capitalism
Workshop on the Art and Politics of East Asia
DUKE UNIV PRESS. 2006: 507–29
View details for DOI 10.1215/08992363-2006-017
View details for Web of Science ID 000241247400006
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Governmentality and the aesthetic state: A Chinese fantasia
Symposium on Problem of Public Intellectuals
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. edited by Ban, W., Xueping, Z. Nanjing University Press. 2006
- From Abroad, with Love: Transnational Texts, Local Critiques Tamkang Review 2006; 36 (4): 185-225
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Tears that crumbled the great wall: The archaeology of feeling in the may fourth folklore movement
Annual Meeting of the Assoication-for-Asian-Studies
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) 2005
- Sympathy, Hypocrisy, and the Trauma of Chineseness Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 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) Journal of the American Oriental Society. 2004
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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
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 1997; 19: 58-111