Haiyan Lee

Assistant Professor
haiyan@stanford.edu

Research Area:

Modern Chinese literature and popular culture; Chinese history and civilization; comparative intellectual history;
moral and political philosophy; emotion, gender and sexuality; film, theater and visual studies; religion and folklore

Before coming to Stanford, Haiyan Lee had taught at Cornell University, the University of Colorado at Boulder, Harvard University, and the University of Hong Kong. Her book, Revolution of the Heart:  A Genealogy of Love in China, 1900-1950, is a critical genealogy of the idea of “love” (qing) in modern Chinese literary and cultural history. It is the first recipient of the Joseph Levenson Prize in the field of modern Chinese literature. Her new book project is entitled “Chinese heterologies, or, How We Learned to Love Strangers.”

Education

Ph.D., Cornell University, 2002
M.A., University of Chicago, 1994
B.A., Beijing University, 1990

Selected publications

Book:
Revolution of the Heart: A Genealogy of Love in China, 1900-1950 (Stanford University Press, 2007). Winner of the Association for Asian Studies 2009 Joseph Levenson Book Prize for the best English-language academic book on post-1900 China

Special journal issue:
2008. Guest editor, “Taking It to Heart: Emotion, Modernity, Asia,” a special issue of positions: east asia cultures critique, vol. 16, no. 2

Refereed journal articles:
Forthcoming. “Enemy under My Skin: Eileen Chang’s ‘Lust, Caution’ and the Politics of Transcendence.” PMLA
2009. “The Ruins of Yuanmingyuan; Or, How to Enjoy a National Wound.” Modern China, vol. 35, no. 2 (March), 155-190
2007. “’A Dime Store of Words’: The Liberty Magazine and the Cultural Logic of the Popular Press.” Twentieth-Century China, vol. 33, no. 1 (November), 53-80
2007. “The Other Chinese: Romancing the Folk in May Fourth Native Soil Fiction.” Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, vol. 33, no. 2 (September), 9-34
2006. “Nannies for Foreigners: The Enchantment of Chinese Womanhood in the Age of Millennial Capitalism.” Public Culture, vol. 18, no. 3 (Fall), 507-529
2006. “From Abroad, with Love: Transnational Texts, Local Critiques.” Tamkang Review vol. 36, no. 4 (Summer), 189-225
2006. “Governmentality and the Aesthetic State: A Chinese Fantasia.”  positions: east asia cultures critique, vol. 14, no.1 (spring), 99-130
2005. “Tears That Crumbled the Great Wall: The Archaeology of Feeling in the May Fourth Folklore Movement.” Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 64, no. 1, (February), 35-65 (JAS feature article)
2004. “Sympathy, Hypocrisy, and the Trauma of Chineseness.”  Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, vol. 16, no. 2 (Fall), 76-122
2001. “All the Feelings That Are Fit to Print: The Community of Sentiment and the Literary Public Sphere in China, 1900-1918.” Modern China, vol. 27, no. 3 (July), 291-327
1997. “Love or Lust? The Sentimental Self in Honglou meng (Dream of the Red Chamber).” Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews, vol. 19, 85-111

Book chapters:
2009. “It’s Right to Party, en Masse” & “Kung Fu Panda, Go Home!” In China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance, ed. Kate Merkel-Hess, Kenneth Pomeranz, and Jeffrey Wasserstrom (Rowman and Littlefield), 173-177, 241-245
2008. “Woman, Demon, Human: The Spectral Journey Home.” In Chinese Films in Focus II, ed. Chris Berry. 2nd edition (BFI Publishing), 243-249
2008. “Meng Jiang Nü and the May Fourth Folklore Movement.” In Meng Jiangnu Brings down the Great Wall: Ten Versions of a Chinese Legend, translated with an introduction by Wilt L. Idema (University of Washington Press), 24-41

Classes

Traditional East Asian Cultures: China
Tiananmen Square: History, Literature, Iconography
Marvelous Creatures: Animals and Humans in Chinese Literature
The Poetics and Politics of Affect

Back To Top