Sponsor
AMES Critical Asian Humanities and the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation Inter-University Center for Sinological Studies
Wai-yee Li is the 1879 Professor of Chinese Literature at Harvard, so named to commemorate the year that Harvard began teaching Chinese as a foreign language. She joined the department in 2000 and is currently serving as Director of Graduate Studies. Li earned her B.A. from the University of Hong Kong (1982) and her Ph.D. from Princeton University (1988), where she was associate professor from 1996 to 2000. She also taught at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Li’s research spans topics ranging from early Chinese thought and narrative to late imperial Chinese literature and culture. She is interested in early Chinese historical writings, Ming-Qing fiction, drama, and poetry, and the relationship between literature and history. Her new book, The Promise and Perils of Things: Literature and Material Culture in Late Imperial China, will be published by Columbia University Press. She is also editing a book on gender and friendship in China and co-editing an anthology of Ming-Qing plays with Wilt Idema and Stephen West.
AMES Critical Asian Humanities and the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation Inter-University Center for Sinological Studies
