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Xiaomei Chen

Xiaomei Chen
陳小眉

Professor, Chinese
Department Chair, East Asian Languages and Cultures
Graduate Group Faculty, Theatre and Dance, Cultural Studies
Affiliated Faculty, Comparative Literature

Ph.D., Comparative Literature, Indiana University

Email: xmchen@ucdavis.edu
Phone: (530) 752-1209
Office: 309 Sproul Hall

Research Interests
Modern Chinese literature, drama, theater, women's literature, comparative literature, literary theory, cultural studies, and performance studies.

Education

  • Ph.D. Comparative Literature, Indiana University
  • M.A., English Literature, Brigham Young University
  • B.A., English (equivalent), Beijing Institute of Foreign Languages

Employment

  • Professor, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of California, Davis
  • Associate Professor, Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures and Department of Comparative Studies, Ohio State University
  • Assistant Professor, Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures and Department of Comparative Studies, Ohio State University

Books

  • Acting the "Right" Part: Political Theater and Popular Drama in Contemporary China. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002.
    ________ Abstract (in Chinese)
    ________ Description
    ________ Reviews
    ________ Table of Contents
  • Occidentalism: A Theory of Counter-discourse in Post-Mao China. Oxford University Press, 1995.
    ________ Abstracts (in English) or (in Chinese)
    ________ Reviews
    ________ Second, revised, and expanded edition, forward by Jinhua Dai. Rowman and Littlefield, 2002.
    ________ A translation in Korean language translated by Jin-Bae Chung. Seoul, Korea (South): Kang Publish Company, 1999.
    ________ A Chinese translation. Nanjing, China: Jiangsu People's Press, forthcoming.

Edited Books:

  • Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama with a Critical Introduction. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.
  • Reading the Right Text: An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Drama with a Critical Introduction. Ed., Xiaomei Chen, University of Hawaii Press, 2003. ("A Critical Introduction")
  • East of West: Cross-cultural Performance and the Staging of Difference. Eds., Claire Sponsler and Xiaomei Chen. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2001.
  • Visual Culture and Memory in Modern China. A Special Issue on Visual Culture in Twentieth-century China for the journal, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture. Eds., Julia F. Andrews and Xiaomei Chen. Columbus: Ohio State University, 2001.

Translation:

  • Jane Eyre, a Chinese translation with an introduction. Beijing: Beijing Foreign Languages Teaching and Research Press, 1979.

Articles and Book Chapters:

  • "Worker-Peasant-Soldier Literature," Words and Their Stories: Essays on the Language of the Chinese Revolution, ed. Ban Wang. Brill: Leiden, 2011.
  • "A Critical Introduction," in Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama with a Critical Introduction, ed., Xiaomei Chen. New York: Columbia University Press, 1-55, 2010.
  • "Fifty Years of Staging A Founding Father: Political Theater, Dramatic History and the Question of Representation," in Representing the Past: Essays on the Historiography of Performance, eds., Thomas E. Postlewait and Charlotte Canning. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 309-333, 2010.
  • "Six Taiping Rebellion Tragedies: Heroes, Traitors, and the Discourse of the Chinese Revolution," in Changing the Subject: Marvin Carlson and Theatre Studies, 1959- 2009, ed., Joseph Roach. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 278-300, 2009.
  • "Tian Han and the Nanguo Phenomenon: Networking the Personal, Communal, and the Culture," Literary Societies in Republican China, eds., Kirk A Denton and Michel Hockx.  Lexington Books, 241-278, 2008.
  • "Reflecting on the Legacy of Tian Han: "Proletarian Modernism" and its Traditional Roots." Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 18: 1 (spring, 2006), 155-215.
  • "Red Maple again - Methodology and Critical Perspectives of Teaching "China" in the American Universities," Wang Ban and Zhong Xueping, eds, Teaching China in America, Nanjing: Nanjing University Press, 1-18, 2006. (又是紅楓時節--寫在旅美教學十八年之後,王斑,鐘雪萍編,美國大學裡的中國)
  • "Remembering War and Revolution on the Maoist Stage," Cold War Literature: Writing the Global Conflict, ed., Andrew Hammond.  New York: Routledge, 2006, 131-145.
  • "'Playing in the Dirt: Plays about Geologists and the Memories of the Cultural Revolution and the Maoist Era," China Review: A Special Issue on the Memory of the Cultural Revolution, edited by Guobin Yang and Yue-ming Bao, 65-95, 2005.
  • "A Critical Introduction," Reading the Right Text: An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Drama. Ed., Xiaomei Chen, University of Hawaii Press, 2003, 1-63
  • "China Writes Back: Reading Stories of the Chinese Diaspora," a new chapter in the second edition of Occidentalizm, Rowman and Littlefield, 2002, 139-176
  • "The Performing of Nation: Modern Spoken Drama." The Columbia Companion to Modern East Asian Literature, China volume. Ed., Kirk Denton. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002, 1-12.
  • "Modern Stage in Search of a Tradition: The Dynamics of Form and Content in 1990s Chinese Theater." Asian Theater Journal 18:2 (2001): 200-221.
  • "Modern Chinese Spoken Drama," The Columbia History of Chinese Literature, ed., Victor H. Mair. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001, 848-877.
  • "From the Lighthouse: Growing up among Ordinary Stars in the Maoist China," Some of Us, eds., Zhong Xueping, Wang Zhen, and Bai Di. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2001, 53-76.
  • "The Making of A Revolutionary Stage: Chinese Model Theater and Western Influences," East of West Difference, eds., Claire Sponsler and Xiaomei Chen. New York: Palgrave, 2001, 125-140.
  • "Wild Man Between Two Cultures," in Soul of Chaos: Critical Perspectives on Gao Xingjian, ed., Kwok-kan Tam. Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2001, 89-110.
  • "Introduction" to Occidentalism. Reprinted in Postcolonialism: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies, ed. Diana Bryden. London and New York: Routledge, 2000, vol. III, 934-961.
  • "Can Tiananmen Theater Go Global? A Case of Cultural Studies from a None-Western Perspective." Poetrica (A special issue on Third World cultural Studies), eds., Kawamoto Koji and Sumie Jones. 52 (1999): 19-33.
  • "Growing up with Posters in the Maoist Era," in Picturing Power in the People's Republic: Posters of the Cultural Revolution, eds., Harriet Evans and Stephanie Donald. Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littlefield Publisher, 1999, 101-122,
  • "Audience, Applause, and Counter-Theater: Border-Crossing in Social Problem Plays in Post-Mao China." New Literary History 29:1 (Winter,1998): 101-120.
  • "Time, Money, and Work: The Flow of Transnational Cultural Capital, in the Making of Neo-American Nationalism in Chinese American Women Writers' Autobiographies." Journal of American Studies (Seoul: Korea) 29:2 (Winter, 1997): 414-421.
  • "Feminism, Countervoices, and the Utterance of Women as Dramatic Other in Post-Mao Theater." Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 24:4 (1997): 819-828.
  • "A Stage of Their Own: the Problematics of Women's Theater in Post-Maoist China." The Journal of Asian Studies 56:1 (Feb. 1997): 3-25.
  • "Women as Dramatic Other in the Body Politics of Post-Mao Theater," China's Perception of Peace, War, and the World, eds., Gerd Kaminski, Barbara Kreissl, and Constantine Tung. Wien: Ludwig Bolzmann Institut fur China, 1997, 160-67.
  • "Reading Mother's Tale: Reconstructing Women's Space in Amy Tan and Zhang Jie." Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, and Reviews 16 (1994): 111-32.
  • "Rediscovering Ezra Pound: A Post-Postcolonial Misreading of a Western Legacy." Paideuma: A Journal Devoted to Ezra Pound Scholarship 23: 2, 3 (1994): 81-106.
  • "The Occidentalist Theater in Post-Mao China: Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Brecht as Counter Others." Stanford Literature Review 10:1, 2 (1993): 143-65.
  • "Occidentalism as a Counter-Discourse: He Shang in Post-Mao China." Critical Inquiry 18:4 (Summer, 1992): 686-712.
  • "The Poetics of 'Misunderstanding': An Ahistorical Model of Cross-cultural Literary History." Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 19:4 (1992): 485-506.
  • "A Wildman Between Two Cultures: Some Paradigmatic Remarks on 'Influence Studies." Comparative Literature Studies 29: 4 (1992): 397-417.
  • "Fathers and Daughters in Early Modern Chinese Drama: On the Problematics of Feminist Discourse in Cross-Cultural Perspective." The Challenge of Cross-Cultural Perspectives. eds., Marilyn R. Waldman, Artemis Leontis, and Muge Galin. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 205-22, 1992.
  • "Misunderstanding Western Modernism: The Menglong Movement in Post-Maoist China." Representations 35 (Summer, 1991): 143-63.
  • "Thomas McFarland and the Anxiety of Influence: Tradition and the Individual Talent Once Again." Nineteenth-Century Contexts 11:2 (1987): 193-205.
  • "Derrida's Pharmacy: Towards A Foucauldian Reading of 'La Pharmacie de Platon.'" Works and Days: Essays in the Socio-Historical Dimensions of Literature and the Arts, 4:2 (Fall, 1986): 33-50.
  • "Genre, Convention, and Society: A Reception Study of the Chinese Reportage." Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 34 (1985): 85-105.

Honors and Awards

  • New Faculty Research Grant, University of California at Davis, 2003
  • Acting the Right Part by Xiaomei Chen, a finalist for the George Freedley Memorial Award for the Outstanding Book in Theater by Theater Library Association, 2004
  • American Council of Learned Society, 2003
  • NEH summer stipend, China, 2002
  • Mellon Foreign Area Studies Fellowship, The Library of Congress, 1998
  • Pacific Cultural Foundation Fellowship, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China, 1994
  • Undergraduate Teaching and Service Award, Ohio State University, 1993
  • Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship, Stanford Humanities Center, Stanford University, 1990
  • Post-Doctoral Fellowship, Center for Chinese Studies, University of California at Berkeley, 1990
  • Dissertation Fellowship, Indiana University, 1988
  • Starr Foundation Fellowship, Indiana University, 1986
  • "Outstanding Woman of 1983" of College of Humanities at Brigham Young University, 1983
  • Graduate Achievement Award of Brigham Young University, 1982-83

Major Professional Services and Offices

  • Chairperson of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, UC Davis
  • Editorial Board, Theater Survey; since 2005
  • Advisory board, American Association of Chinese and Comparative Literature (elected 08)
  • Advisory board, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture (since 2003; former co-editor)
  • Advisory board, American Association of Chinese and Comparative Literature (since 02)
  • Member of Academic Personal Committee, UC Davis (advisory of more than 700 merit and promotion cases, 2009-2009 Academic Year)

Courses Taught

  • CHN 10: Modern Chinese Literature in English
  • CHN 101: Chinese Film
  • CHN 102: Chinese American Literature
  • CHN 103: Modern Chinese Drama in English
  • CHN 104: Modern Chinese Fiction in English
  • CHN 109H: Popular Culture


209 Sproul Hall - Phone: (530) 752-4999 - Fax: (530) 752-8630 - Email: gjhart@ucdavis.edu (Jeanne Hart)
Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures