Biography
My research interests center around the dynamic relationships between texts and images. Specifically, I am interested in how human as a visual object of appraisal were perceived, viewed, defined, termed, ranked and valued in late imperial China; how these textual descriptions are selected, internalized, and transformed into pictorial devices, including but not limited to portraits, illustrations, game-cards, and other images derived from texts; and how these images, in return, reconstructed and redefined their originary texts, and influenced the popularization, circulation, commercialization, and (re)interpretation of the texts. I am also interested in how technological, economic, social and epistemological changes interact with literary and pictorial portraits.
Prior to joining the University of Chicago, I worked as a lecturer in East Asian Studies at Princeton University for three years. I also taught as a head instructor at the Princeton in Beijing (PiB) program in the summer of 2013.
Publications
Zhou, Yunjun. "History as Collage: The Evolution of Portrayals of Cao Cao in Chronology, Historiography, and the Historical Novel of the Three Kingdoms." CLEAR 46 (2024): 41–65.
Chou, Chih-p’ing, Yongtao Zhang, and Yunjun Zhou, eds. China’s Development and Dilemmas: Authentic Readings for Advanced Learners 中国的发展与困境: 现代汉语高级读本. 1st ed. Boston: Cheng & Tsui, 2018.