Dr. Keren He

Research

Keren He (Ph.D. Stanford University) specializes in modern Chinese and Sinophone literature, media, and popular culture, with a focus on age and suicide studies. Her current manuscript, Over My Dead Body: Political Suicide in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, examines Chinese radical sentiments as part of the transnational spiritual revival intersecting with anti-capitalism in the early twentieth century. Her second book project, Anti-Aging in Contemporary Chinese Worlds (1980-2020), theorizes old age as a politics of living that redefines notions of well-being, agency, and development underlying a “successful” Chinese life course. She is also developing a new project on Sinophone board games and their digitization.

Awards

Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2020–2021
Charlotte W. Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship Honorable Mention, 2016–17
Mellon Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, 2016–17, 2015–2016 (declined)
Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies Dissertation Fellowship, 2015–16, 2012–13
Stanford Graduate Research Opportunities Grant, 2015
Stanford Dean’s Office Fellowship, 2014–15
Stanford Center for East Asian Studies Summer Grant, 2011–2015
2nd Prize in the First National World Literature Cup Translation Contest, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, 2004 (1st Prize vacant)

Publications

Peer-reviewed Articles and Book Chapters

“Gaming While Aging: The Ludification of Later Life in Pokémon GO.” In Games and Play in Chinese and Sinophone Worlds, eds. Douglas Eyman, Li Guo, and Hongmei Sun (forthcoming from the University of Washington Press in 2023).

“Dying Against Democracy: Suicide Protest and the 1905 Anti-American Boycott.” The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 80, no. 4, 865–888, 2021.

“Outcast, Autocrat, Believer: The Making of a Radical in the Late Qing Biographies of Zheng Chenggong.” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, vol. 30, no. 2, 267–318, 2018.

Other Academic Articles and Book Reviews

Husi chuyu xia: du Chenqian xinzuo humei mengjiala” [Animality in Chenqian’s “My Tiger Sister Bangladesh”]. Beijing Literature (CJC-indexed), no. 651, 2016.

“Jingxiang de laolong: du Chenqian Changpian xiaoshuo wuqiongjing” [The prison of spectacle in Chen Qian’s Infinite Mirror]. Southern Cultural Forum (CSTPCD, CSSCI & CJC-indexed), no. 172, 2016.

“Book Review: China on Film: A Century of Exploration, Confrontation, and Controversy, by Paul Pickowicz.” Chinese Studies Abroad, vol. 3, no. 4, 2015.

“Book Review: Accidental Incest, Filial Cannibalism and Other Peculiar Encounters in Late Imperial Chinese Literature, by Tina Lu.” Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs, vol. 11, Summer, 2011.

“Shi bi le tu, yuan de wo suo: cong gegeburu du sayide de liuwang shengya” [Out of place: exile in Edward Said’s memoir]. China Book Review, vol. 6, 2007.

Translations

The Life and Art of Qi Baishi,” by Lang Shaojun. In Tracing the Past, Drawing the Future: Master Ink Painters in Twentieth-century China, Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, Distributed by Harry N. Abrams, 2010.

Selected Writings of C.S. Lewis, by C. S. Lewis, ed. Patricia S. Klein. Shanghai: Huadong Normal University Press, 2006 (co-translation with Wang Yongmei).

The Idea of a University, by John Henry Newman. Guiyang: Guizhou Education Press, 2006 (co-translation with He Guanghu, He Keyong, and Gao Shining).

Buddha, His Life in Images, by Michael Jordan. Xi’an: Shanxi Normal University Press, 2005.

World Religions, by Ninian Smart. Beijing: Peking University Press, 2004 (co-translation with Jin Ze, Zhu Mingzhong et al.).

“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead,” by Tom Stoppard, World Literature, vol. 396, no.4, 2004.