Bio
Originally coming from China, he received his PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2009. He has been teaching Chinese language, literature and culture at ISU for 11 years.
Area of expertise
Chinese literature and culture
Topics of interest
20th century Chinese literature and intellectual history with a focus on the issues of enlightenment/nationalism/violence and belief
Grants and awards
- CEAH Research Scholarship, Iowa State University, 2014, 2017.
- McClain Faculty Fellowship, Iowa State University, 2014.
- LAS Award for International Service, Iowa State University, 2018.
Recent / major publications
Book chapters
- “Modern Chinese Essays: Zhou Zuoren, Lin Yutang and Others.” The Routledge Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature, edited by Gu Ming Dong. Routledge, 2018, pp.290–302.
- “Zhao Shuli and Sun Li’s Novels: Chronicles of New Peasantry.” The Routledge Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature, edited by Gu Ming Dong. Routledge, 2018, pp.305–317.
- “Mo Yan’s Fiction: Human Existence beyond Good and Evil.” The Routledge Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature, edited by Gu Ming Dong. Routledge, 2018, pp.569–579.
Refereed journal articles
- “Mo Yan’s Frog and the Competing Discourses on the Reconstruction of Cultural Memory on Birth and Birth Control.” Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Literature, 15 (2016): 189–220.
- “Exploring the Cultural Memory of the Common People: Desire, Violence, and Divinity in Mo Yan’s Sandalwood Death (2001).” Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, 42.1 (2016) 25–48.
- “‘Stay Loyal to the Earth’: The Transcendental, the Teleological, and the Quotidian in Zhou Zuoren’s (1885-1967) Reflections on Modern Life.” Asia Major, 28, part 2 (2015) 109–145.
- “Trauma, Play, Memory: Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out and Mo Yan’s Strategies for Writing History as Story.” Frontiers of Literary Studies in China, 9, no. 2 (2015) 235–258.
- “The Sacred and the Cannibalistic: Zhou Zuoren’s Critique of Violence in Modern China.” Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews, 36 (2014): 25–60.
- “Beyond the Nation-State Paradigm: On the Reconstruction of Cultural Subjectivity and Universalism in China.” Frontiers of Literary Theory (Wenxue Lilun Qianyan), 11 (2014): 25–53.
- “To Believe or Not to Believe: Zhou Zuoren’s Alternative Approaches to the Chinese Enlightenment.” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Spring 25, no. 1 (2013): 206–260.
- “Language Practicum: the ‘Interface’ Between Classroom Learning and Real-world Communication.” Language Teaching and Linguistic Studies, 3 (2012): 50–57.