Chinese Literature, Performance, and Media Studies
Chinese Literature, Performance, and Media Studies in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures offers a curriculum with intellectual breadth and depth. Students pursue in depth specific topics from a variety of critical perspectives and receive a broad foundation in the literary history of China. The faculty specialize in classical poetry and poetics, late imperial drama and fiction, local and ethnic oral and oral-connected literatures, modern literature and literary thought, film and media studies, modern drama, museums and memory studies, east-west intercultural relations, and the study of western sinology. In addition to canonized literary texts, the faculty teach and research visual, material, and performative cultures. They treat their material from cultural-historical perspectives—as informed and shaped by historical, ideological, social, and intellectual factors—and convey the contextualized nature of both the production and interpretation of texts. Students are trained in the techniques of close analysis of texts and the critical application of diverse theoretical approaches.
[ Top ]Chinese Literature Faculty Members
Mark Bender
Professor Bender specializes in traditional performance and performance-connected literature of China, including local Han and ethnic minority cultures. He teaches Chinese and East Asian culture courses, a course on Traditional Performance in Contemporary East Asia, an introduction to folklore in East Asia, and seminars that have included ethnic minority epic, Chinese prosimetric literature, and oral and written ethnic poetry. Bender has published on numerous subjects, including Suzhou professional storytelling (pingtan) and the oral and written literatures of several Chinese minority cultures, such as the Yi, Miao (Hmong), and Daur. His books include 'Plum and Bamboo: China's Suzhou Chantefable Tradition' (University of Illinois Press, 2003)and 'Butterfly Mother: Miao (Hmong)Creation Epics from Guizhou Province, China' (Hackett Publishing, 2006). A recent article is "Animals and Plants in the Nuosu 'Book of Origins'" (Asian Ethnology, Vol. 67, 2008). He is currently collaborating with Victor Mair (U. Penn.)on a reader on Chinese oral performance traditions. Other projects include a study of nature themes in Yi oral and written literature, an annotated translation of a major Yi epic, and an examination of trends in folklore research in China.
Professor Bender specializes in traditional performance and performance-connected literature of China, including local Han and ethnic minority cultures. He teaches Chinese and East Asian culture courses, a course on Traditional Performance in Contemporary East Asia, an introduction to folklore in East Asia, and seminars that have included ethnic minority epic, Chinese prosimetric literature, and oral and written ethnic poetry. Bender has published on numerous subjects, including Suzhou professional storytelling (pingtan) and the oral and written literatures of several Chinese minority cultures, such as the Yi, Miao (Hmong), and Daur. His books include 'Plum and Bamboo: China's Suzhou Chantefable Tradition' (University of Illinois Press, 2003)and 'Butterfly Mother: Miao (Hmong)Creation Epics from Guizhou Province, China' (Hackett Publishing, 2006). A recent article is "Animals and Plants in the Nuosu 'Book of Origins'" (Asian Ethnology, Vol. 67, 2008). He is currently collaborating with Victor Mair (U. Penn.)on a reader on Chinese oral performance traditions. Other projects include a study of nature themes in Yi oral and written literature, an annotated translation of a major Yi epic, and an examination of trends in folklore research in China.
Kirk Denton
KIrk Denton specializes in the fiction and literary criticism of the Republican period (1911-1949). He regularly teaches undergraduate courses in modern Chinese literature in translation, Asian American film, and Chinese film, as well as graduate courses and seminars on modern Chinese fiction, the writer Lu Xun, popular culture, Taiwan literature, and Chinese film. He is especially interested in the inception and formation of a discourse of modernity in the May Fourth period and how that discourse was to some degree informed and shaped by traditional concerns. Professor Denton's edited collection, Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature. 1893-1945, was published by Stanford University Press in 1996. Two years later, his The Problematic of Self in Modern Chinese Literature: Hu Feng and Lu Ling was also published by Stanford. He is associate editor of the Chinese section of The Columbia Companion to Modern East Literature (Columbia, 2003) and a coeditor of China: Adapting the Past, Confronting the Future (Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 2002). He is co-editor, with Michel Hockx, of Literary Societies in Republican China (Lexington, 2008). He also edited China: A Traveler's Literary Companion (Whereabouts, 2008). He has published several articles on museum culture, including in The China Quarterly and Japan Focus, and he is presently writing a book on the politics of historical representation in museums and memorial sites in Greater China entitled Exhibiting the Past: Historical Memory and the Politics and Ideology of Museums in the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Denton is editor of the journal Modern Chinese Literature and Culture and manager of the online MCLC Resource Center, which hosts the MCLC LIST, a listserv devoted to scholarly discussion on the culture of modern and contemporary China. Denton has been a visiting professor at Harvard University and National Chung-hsing University.
KIrk Denton specializes in the fiction and literary criticism of the Republican period (1911-1949). He regularly teaches undergraduate courses in modern Chinese literature in translation, Asian American film, and Chinese film, as well as graduate courses and seminars on modern Chinese fiction, the writer Lu Xun, popular culture, Taiwan literature, and Chinese film. He is especially interested in the inception and formation of a discourse of modernity in the May Fourth period and how that discourse was to some degree informed and shaped by traditional concerns. Professor Denton's edited collection, Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature. 1893-1945, was published by Stanford University Press in 1996. Two years later, his The Problematic of Self in Modern Chinese Literature: Hu Feng and Lu Ling was also published by Stanford. He is associate editor of the Chinese section of The Columbia Companion to Modern East Literature (Columbia, 2003) and a coeditor of China: Adapting the Past, Confronting the Future (Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 2002). He is co-editor, with Michel Hockx, of Literary Societies in Republican China (Lexington, 2008). He also edited China: A Traveler's Literary Companion (Whereabouts, 2008). He has published several articles on museum culture, including in The China Quarterly and Japan Focus, and he is presently writing a book on the politics of historical representation in museums and memorial sites in Greater China entitled Exhibiting the Past: Historical Memory and the Politics and Ideology of Museums in the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Denton is editor of the journal Modern Chinese Literature and Culture and manager of the online MCLC Resource Center, which hosts the MCLC LIST, a listserv devoted to scholarly discussion on the culture of modern and contemporary China. Denton has been a visiting professor at Harvard University and National Chung-hsing University.
Meow Hui Goh
Meow Hui Goh specializes in the literature, literary history, and cultural history of medieval China. Her book, Sound and Sight: Poetry and Courtier Culture in the Yongming Era (483-493), is forthcoming. In it, she looks at how Shen Yue, Wang Rong, and Xie Tiao, whose invention of the “Yongming Style” has long been understood only as an experimentation in “poetic technique,” integrate their Buddhist perception of the phenomenal world in representing and negotiating their identity as courtiers. She has articles published or forthcoming in major journals, including Journal of the American Oriental Society and Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews. She is currently working on a book project on Western Jin (265-316) literary culture, which deals with these issues: the emergence of the concept of literary history, writers’ self-consciousness, the process of literary composition, and the social circulation and promotion of works and writers. She is also interested in the trope of “hometown” in Northern and Southern Dynasties poetry and the literary and cultural significance of traditional rhyming practices. She regularly offers classes in early and medieval Chinese literature, bibliography, and Classical Chinese, both at the graduate and undergraduate levels. She is the Secretary/Treasurer of the American Oriental Society, Western Branch, and was a Post-doctorate Fellow at the Center for East Asian Studies, Stanford University.
Meow Hui Goh specializes in the literature, literary history, and cultural history of medieval China. Her book, Sound and Sight: Poetry and Courtier Culture in the Yongming Era (483-493), is forthcoming. In it, she looks at how Shen Yue, Wang Rong, and Xie Tiao, whose invention of the “Yongming Style” has long been understood only as an experimentation in “poetic technique,” integrate their Buddhist perception of the phenomenal world in representing and negotiating their identity as courtiers. She has articles published or forthcoming in major journals, including Journal of the American Oriental Society and Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews. She is currently working on a book project on Western Jin (265-316) literary culture, which deals with these issues: the emergence of the concept of literary history, writers’ self-consciousness, the process of literary composition, and the social circulation and promotion of works and writers. She is also interested in the trope of “hometown” in Northern and Southern Dynasties poetry and the literary and cultural significance of traditional rhyming practices. She regularly offers classes in early and medieval Chinese literature, bibliography, and Classical Chinese, both at the graduate and undergraduate levels. She is the Secretary/Treasurer of the American Oriental Society, Western Branch, and was a Post-doctorate Fellow at the Center for East Asian Studies, Stanford University.
Heather Inwood
Heather Inwood is interested in the relationship between new media and contemporary culture in the PRC, especially the ways in which developing technologies and media practices are molding literary and cultural production. Her PhD dissertation, "On the Scene of Contemporary Chinese Poetry", analyzes cultural discourse on the "live scene" (xianchang) and "liveness" (xianchangxing), spanning different spaces of the media to investigate the formation and conceptualization of the post-2000 poetry "scene" in mainland China. Her recent article, “Identity Politics in Online Chinese Poetry Groups,” appears in the Postmodern China edition of Chinese History and Society. She regularly presents her work at conferences, including those held by the Association for Chinese and Comparative Literature, the British Association for Chinese Studies and the International Convention of Asia Scholars. In addition to her academic work, Heather has written articles in Chinese for newspapers and magazines in China and the UK, and enjoys updating her Chinese-language blog on more lighthearted aspects of contemporary Chinese and British culture and society. Before coming to OSU, she studied at Cambridge University, Beijing University, and SOAS, the University of London.
Heather Inwood is interested in the relationship between new media and contemporary culture in the PRC, especially the ways in which developing technologies and media practices are molding literary and cultural production. Her PhD dissertation, "On the Scene of Contemporary Chinese Poetry", analyzes cultural discourse on the "live scene" (xianchang) and "liveness" (xianchangxing), spanning different spaces of the media to investigate the formation and conceptualization of the post-2000 poetry "scene" in mainland China. Her recent article, “Identity Politics in Online Chinese Poetry Groups,” appears in the Postmodern China edition of Chinese History and Society. She regularly presents her work at conferences, including those held by the Association for Chinese and Comparative Literature, the British Association for Chinese Studies and the International Convention of Asia Scholars. In addition to her academic work, Heather has written articles in Chinese for newspapers and magazines in China and the UK, and enjoys updating her Chinese-language blog on more lighthearted aspects of contemporary Chinese and British culture and society. Before coming to OSU, she studied at Cambridge University, Beijing University, and SOAS, the University of London.
Patricia Sieber
Patricia Sieber is the author of *Theaters of Desire: Authors, Readers, and the Reproduction of Early Chinese Song-Drama, 1300-2000,* a cross-cultural history of the construction and reception of "Yuan zaju." Her current research project, *The Power of Imprints: Qing-Period Publishing and the Formation of European Sinology, 1720-1860* examines the role that books acquisitions by Europeans in China played in the formation of the literary canon of Chinese belles-lettres in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe. Other publications include an edited collection of contemporary women's fiction entitled *Red Is Not the Only Color* and articles on canon formation, visuality, and performativity in *Modern Chinese Literature and Culture,* CHINOPERL, *Monumenta Serica,* *Journal of Chinese Religions* and *Contemporary Buddhism" among others. She teaches courses on different facets of traditional Chinese literature, including courses on traditional Chinese novels & drama, the intersection of traditional & modern Chinese literature, and comparative literary relations. She has been a fellow at the Center for Chinese Studies, National Central Library (Taipei), at the Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities (OSU), and at the Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.). Her research has been awarded funding from the NEH, ACLS, DAAD and the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation among others. As principal project director for OSU's East Asian Studies FY 2006-10 National Resource Center (NRC) and Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) grants from the U.S. Department of Education, she currently serves as the director of OSU's East Asian Studies Center as well as the Institute for Chinese Studies.
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Patricia Sieber is the author of *Theaters of Desire: Authors, Readers, and the Reproduction of Early Chinese Song-Drama, 1300-2000,* a cross-cultural history of the construction and reception of "Yuan zaju." Her current research project, *The Power of Imprints: Qing-Period Publishing and the Formation of European Sinology, 1720-1860* examines the role that books acquisitions by Europeans in China played in the formation of the literary canon of Chinese belles-lettres in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe. Other publications include an edited collection of contemporary women's fiction entitled *Red Is Not the Only Color* and articles on canon formation, visuality, and performativity in *Modern Chinese Literature and Culture,* CHINOPERL, *Monumenta Serica,* *Journal of Chinese Religions* and *Contemporary Buddhism" among others. She teaches courses on different facets of traditional Chinese literature, including courses on traditional Chinese novels & drama, the intersection of traditional & modern Chinese literature, and comparative literary relations. She has been a fellow at the Center for Chinese Studies, National Central Library (Taipei), at the Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities (OSU), and at the Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.). Her research has been awarded funding from the NEH, ACLS, DAAD and the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation among others. As principal project director for OSU's East Asian Studies FY 2006-10 National Resource Center (NRC) and Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) grants from the U.S. Department of Education, she currently serves as the director of OSU's East Asian Studies Center as well as the Institute for Chinese Studies.
