Biography
Currently, my main research project is an intellectual history of modern Chinese literary criticism, focusing on the criticism of writing style. “Style” is usually considered a formalist and apolitical aspect of literature, but my study finds that the intense interest in style in Chinese literary criticism of the mid to late twentieth century was driven by and served the demands of the Cold War. This study contributes to literary theory, aesthetics, linguistics, translation studies, and the history of the global Cold War, especially Sino-Soviet relations and US influences in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
As an extension of this project, I am generally interested in questions about style in any artistic medium.
Other research and teaching interests include Lu Xun; martial arts fiction in post-war Hong Kong; modern fiction, film, and television set in early China; visual culture.