Biography
I work on sixteenth-century Chinese novels. My dissertation, tentatively titled The Worlds of Journey to the West, explores world-formation in the Ming masterwork Xiyouji, thinking about conceptions of world that emerge in unexpected places: discussions of human anatomy, scenes of demonic combat, and landscape poetry. I am also interested in how in the Ming the novel form became a venue to think about politics beyond the human. I graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 2020 with degrees in Chinese and anthropology and also studied Chinese literature and history at Harvard University and Taiwan National University. When I am not reading or writing, I like to struggle to play the organ, explore historical sites around Chicago, and swim in Lake Michigan.