Xiaofei Tian received her BA from Beijing University in 1989 and her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University in 1998. Her research interests include Chinese literature and culture, manuscript culture, book history, the history of ideas, and world literature. Her major research field is the literature, social history and cultural history of early medieval China. She has also published and taught courses on classical vernacular fiction, the literature of the Republican era, the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), and contemporary Chinese literary and cultural issues.

She is the author of Tao Yuanming and Manuscript Culture: The Record of a Dusty Table (2005) and Beacon Fire and Shooting Star: The Literary Culture of the Liang (502-557) (2007). Her Chinese publications include a book on the sixteenth-century novel The Plum in the Golden Vase, a book on Sappho, a book on the Moorish Spain, a book of essays on premodern and modern Chinese literature and culture, and several works of translation. She is also a writer who published several collections of poetry and essays.

Her new book, Visionary Journeys: Travel Writings from Early Medieval and Nineteenth-century China, is forthcoming from Harvard University Asia Center Press.

She is currently working on a book manuscript on nostalgia for the Three Kingdoms period, as well as a study and translation of a late nineteenth-century manuscript on the traumatic childhood memory of the Taiping Rebellion.

PUBLICATIONS

Selected Books

Selected Articles and Book Chapters

Chapter Three, "From the Eastern Jin through the Early Tang (317-649)." In The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature, ed. Kang-i Sun Chang and Stephen Owen. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010: 199-285.

"Muffled Dialect Spoken by Green Fruits: An Alternative History of Modern Chinese Poetry." Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 21.1 (Spring 2009): 1-44.

"Woman in the Tower: 'Nineteen Old Poems' and the Poetics of Un/Concealment." Early Medieval China 15 (2009): 1-19.

"The Representation of Sovereignty in Chinese Vernacular Fiction." In Text, Performance and Gender in Chinese Literature and Music: Essays in Honor of Wilt Idema, ed. Maghiel van Crevel, Tian Yuan Tan and Michel Hockx. Leiden: Brill, 2009: 211-231.

"Misplaced: Three Qing Manuscripts of a Medieval Poet." Asia Major 20.2 (2007): 1-23.

"The Twilight of the Masters: Masters Literature (zishu) in Early Medieval China." Journal of the American Oriental Society 126.4 (2006): 1-22.

"Seeing with the Mind’s Eye: The Eastern Jin Discourse of Visualization and Imagination." Asia Major 18.2 (2006): 67-102.

田與園之間的張力：關於牡丹亭 "勸農". In 湯顯祖與牡丹亭, ed. Hua Wei. Taibei: Academia Sinica, 2006: 313-42.  

"A Preliminary Comparison of the Two Recensions of Jinpingmei." Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 62.2 (Dec. 2002): 347-88.

"The Deer and the Cauldron: Jin Yong, Hong Kong Pop Culture, and (Post-) Modernity"” 鹿鼎記: 金庸, 香港通俗文化, 與(後)現代性. In A Collection of Papers for the International Conference on Jin Yong's Fiction,ed. Wu Xiaodong and Ji Birui. Beijing: BeijingUniversity Press, 2002: 341-371.

GENERAL EXAMINATION FIELDS

Medieval Chinese Literature (first to tenth centuries)

Candidates are expected to demonstrate a broad knowledge of the major literary genres as well as their social and cultural contexts. Candidates should be familiar with the representative works in each of the major genres, and will have read a larger selection of works in their specialized genre. They are also expected to be acquainted with modern secondary scholarship, both in English and in Chinese. Basic knowledge of earlier and later literary history is required.

Primary Research Language

A solid knowledge of classical and modern Chinese.

SPRING COURSES

Foreign Cultures 68. Art Authority and the Claims of the Individual in Chinese Literary Culture