Associate ProfessorAssociate Chair & Director of Undergraduate Studies
Research
My research focuses on modern Chinese literatures, visual culture, urban studies, and environmental studies. My current research analyzes relational ontologies within Sinophone eco-literature. The project was motivated by conclusions in my book, Cities Surround the Countryside: Urban Aesthetics in Postsocialist China (Duke University Press, 2010), which analyzes urban planning, fiction, cinema, art, and cultural studies in the People’s Republic of China at the turn of the 21st century. I have also translated essays and fiction by Chinese and Taiwanese intellectuals.
Awards
National Humanities Center Fellow, 2017-18, for Bordering Chinese Eco-Literatures (supported by the NEH Fellowship and Walter Hines Page Fellowship of the Research Triangle Foundation)
Book Award Finalist for Cities Surround the Countryside, Southeast Conference of the Association of Asian Studies Book Prize (2011).
Courses
ASIA/WGST 56: First-Year Seminar: Writing Women in Modern China
CHIN 356: Chinese Environmental Literature
CHIN 407: Readings in Modern Chinese I (taught in Chinese)
CHIN 408: Readings in Modern Chinese II (taught in Chinese)
CHIN 463: Narrative Ethics in Modern China
CHIN 464: The City in Modern Chinese Literature and Film
CHIN 562: Contemporary Chinese Urban Culture and Arts
ASIA 691H: Senior Honors Thesis I
Publications
Book
Cities Surround the Countryside: Urban Aesthetics in Postsocialist China. Duke UP, 2010.
Selected Articles
“Ecology as Method.” Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature, 16.2 (Fall 2019): 320-345. https://prism-journal.org/2019/10/18/prism-volume-16-no-2-special-issue-method-as-method-table-of-contents/
“Posthuman Policies for Creative, Smart, Eco-Cities? Case Studies from China.” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space (17 April 2018): 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X18765481
“Chinese Eco-Cities and Urbanization Planning: Case Studies of Tongzhou, Lingang, and Dujiangyan.” In Ghost Protocol: Development and Displacement in Global China. Eds. Carlos Rojas, Ralph Litzinger. Duke University Press, 2016. 36-61.
“Contemporary Urban Fiction: Rewriting the City.” With Jie Liu. In The Columbia Companion to Modern Chinese Literature. Ed. Kirk Denton. Columbia University Press, 2016. 345-354.
“Anthropocosmic Resonance in Post-Mao Chinese Environmental Literature.” In Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 《文艺理论研究》33.4 (2013): 34-44.
“Coming of Age in RMB City.” In Spectacle and the City: Chinese Urbanities in Art and Popular Culture. Eds.. Jeroen de Kloet and Lena Scheen. University of Amsterdam Press, 2013. 41-57.
“Pining for the Native Soil.” In Homecoming: Contextualizing, Materializing, and Practicing the Rural in China. Eds. Joshua Bolchover, Christiane Lange, and John Lin. Gestalten Press, 2013. 47-49.
“Diagnosing Beijing 2020: Mapping the Ungovernable City.” Footprint: Delft School of Design Journal Vol. 1 No. 2 (Spring 2008): 15-29.
http://www.footprintjournal.org/issues/show/mapping-urban-complexity-in-an-asian-context
“Urban Ethics: Modernity and the Morality of Everyday Life.” In Contested Modernities in Chinese Literature. Ed. Charles Laughlin. New York: Palgrave, 2005. 193-216.
“Spaces of Disappearance: Aesthetic Responses to Contemporary Beijing City Planning.” Journal of Contemporary China Vol. 13 No. 39 (May 2004): 277-310.
Selected Translations
Qiu Huadong 邱华栋 . “A River Full of Glass” 里面全是玻璃的河. Chutzpah! 天南 8 (June 2012): 11-24. Republished in Read Paper Republic No. 35 (2016): https://paper-republic.org/pubs/read/a-river-full-of-glass/
With Thomas Moran. Yu-Shan Huang and Chun-Chi Wang. “Post–Taiwan New Cinema Women Directors and Their Films: Auteurs, Images, Language.” In Chinese Women’s Cinema: Transnational Contexts. Ed. Lingzhen Wang. Columbia UP, 2011. 132-153.
Wang Xiaoming. “China on the Brink of a ‘Momentous Era.’” positions: east asia cultures critique 11.3 (Winter 2003): 585-611. Revised, edited version of translation published as “A Manifesto for Cultural Studies.” In One China, Many Paths. Ed. Wang Chaohua. London: Verso, 2003. 274-291.
Selected Reviews
Yomi Braester, Painting the City Red: Chinese Cinema and the Urban Contract. Duke University Press, 2010. CLEAR: Chinese Literature Essays and Reviews 33 (2011): 202-205.
Jing Wang, Brand New China: Advertising, Media, and Commercial Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008). The Journal of Asian Studies 68.2 (May 2009). 616-18.
Wu Hung, Remaking Beijing: Tiananmen Square and the Creation of a Political Space (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). MCLC (November 2007). http://mclc.osu.edu/rc/pubs/reviews/visser2.htm
Yiyan Wang, Narrating China: Jia Pingwa and His Fictional World (New York and London: Routledge, 2006). MCLC (September 2006). http://mclc.osu.edu/rc/pubs/reviews/visser.htm