New Book Talk Series 02-Judith Zeitlin

The University of Chicago Center in Beijing

20th floor, Culture Plaza
No. 59A Zhong Guan Cun Street
Haidian District Beijing 100872

17:00–17:30 Regristration 

17:30–18:30 Conversation and Q&A 

18:30–19:30 Dinner 

Language: Chinese

Click HERE to register.

Author: Judith Zeitlin

William R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Service Professor of Chinese Literature, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago, and Professor in the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies. Her research centers on Ming-Qing literature, drama, music and visual culture. She is the author of The Historian of the Strange: Pu Songling and the Chinese Classical Tale and Traces of Ming-Qing Literature, Theatre, and Medicine: Selected Essays by Judith T. Zeitlin (Chinese translation forthcoming). She is currently collaborating with Chinese composer Yao Chen on an opera adapted from Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, and undertaking the complete English translation of this work.

Translator: He Bo

She holds a Bachelor of Laws from Wuhan University, a Master of Arts in English Literature, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Chinese Literature. She is currently Associate Professor and Master’s Supervisor at the School of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Wuhan University. Her research interests include translation studies, overseas Sinology, and the global dissemination of Chinese literature. Her representative articles include Multidimensional Perspectives on Ming-Qing Drama Studies in English-Language Scholarship since the New Century and Cultural Close Reading: A New Model of Ming-Qing Chuanqi Studies in North American Academia. Her major translations include A Year in Provence and The Companion to Chinese Literature (forthcoming).

Discussant: Li Yuanda

Lecturer at the School of Medical Humanities, Peking University. He obtained his Master of Arts (2014) and Doctor of Philosophy (2018) in Literature from Peking University. His research fields include medicine and literature in premodern China, and literature and intellectual thought during dynastic transitions. He has published two monographs: The Root of Illness in the Grand View Garden: Bodily and Mental Predicaments of Characters in Dream of the Red Chamber (People’s Literature Publishing House, 2025) and Jade Light and Sword Spirit: Dynastic Transition Memory and Narrative Sentiment of Zhang Yi, a Ming Loyalist (Beijing Publishing House, 2025). His works are included in the Excellent Achievements Library of the Beijing Social Science Fund. He has presided over the National Social Science Fund Project and the Beijing Post-Funding Project. He was awarded the First Prize in the 14th Beijing University Young Teachers’ Basic Teaching Skills Competition. His recent research focuses on medical narratives in traditional Chinese novels and dramas.

Moderator: Paola Iovene

Associate Professor of Modern Chinese Literature, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago, and Faculty Director of the University of Chicago Center in Beijing. She is the author of Tales of Futures Past: Anticipation and the Ends of Literature in Contemporary China (2014), and has published numerous scholarly articles on Chinese literature and film. She has translated novellas and short stories by contemporary Chinese writers including Ge Fei, Han Shaogong and Xu Kun into Italian. She is co-editor of Sound Alignments: Popular Music in Asia's Cold Wars (2021, with M. Bourdaghs and K. Mason), and editor of the special issue “Cultures of Labor in Contemporary China” for positions: asia critique (2023). Her most recent article is “Reading beyond the Text: How the Radio Adaptation of The Ordinary World Reshapes Ordinary Readers”. She currently serves as Associate Editor of positions: asia critique.