Prominent Chinese-American Writers

Prof. Eva S. Chou

(This lecture will be in English.)          

The Renwen Society at China Institute presents a lecture by Dr. Eva S. Chou on Sunday October 2, 2011, 2-4 pm, entitled “Prominent Chinese-American Writers.” She will give an overview of the successive generations of American writers of Chinese background and the historical circumstances that attended their emergence and then focus on a number of notable, prize-winning authors of today and their most critically acclaimed works. Authors introduced will include Gish Jen, Ha Jin, Qiu Xiaolong, and Yiyun Li.

Dr. Chou is professor in the English Department at Baruch College, City University of New York, where she teaches courses in Asian-American Literature, Contemporary Asian Literature in Translation, Post-colonial Literature, and Anglophone Post-colonial Literature. She received her B.A. from Harvard College in English Literature and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University in Chinese Literature. Her first specialization was in classical poetry of the Tang dynasty, with a particular interest in understanding why it has remained central to Chinese identity over the next twelve centuries. In this field, her study of Du Fu was published by Cambridge University Press in1996 and re-issued in paperback in 2006. Her current focus is on modern Chinese literature and its connections to publishing, art woodcuts, the new readership, and political movements. Her book-length study of Lu Xun is forthcoming this year from Association for Asian Studies Publications. She has also published many articles in literary and cultural studies in journals such as China Quarterly, Journal of Asian Studies, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, and Asia Major. Dr. Chou has received fellowships from National Endowment for the Humanities and American Council of Learned Societies, and has been a Fellow at the Kluge Center, Library of Congress, and at Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University. This past year, during a sabbatical, she was Visiting Scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge University.