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| Shengqing Wu,
assistant professor of East Asian languages and literatures, is an expert on
modern Chinese literature and culture. |
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| Posted 10.16.06 |
Asian Languages, Literatures Welcomes New Assistant Professor
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Shengqing Wu has joined the Asian Languages and
Literatures Department and East Asian Studies Program as an assistant
professor.
Wu, a native of Hangzhou, China specializes in modern Chinese literature and
intellectual history.
“Wesleyan’s commitment to the excellence of liberal arts education, its
top-notch faculty, the Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies, and
its convenient geographical location were all big attractions for me,” she
says.
She earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in Chinese literature at
Fudan University in Shanghai, with a special emphasis on the late imperial
era.
In 1996, Wu came to the United States to study Western theories of
literatures, cultural studies, and gender studies at the University of
California, Los Angeles. There, she expanded her research to include Chinese
prose narrative and poetry and intellectual history, with a
focus on both new and traditional literary forms from the 1890s to the
1940s. Her dissertation was titled: “Classical Lyric Modernities: Poetics,
Gender, and Politics in Modern China (1900-1937).”
At UCLA she received a Lenart Travel Fellowship through the Division of
Humanities, a Research Assistantship through the Center for Chinese Studies;
a Confucian Studies Fellowship and a Chancellor’s Dissertation Year
Fellowship. In 2005-06, she received an An Wang Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University.
Wu has already taught numerous classes on Chinese-related topics. At UCLA
she taught Chinese language and classical Chinese. At the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, she taught Chinese
ghost stories, fourth-year Chinese readings in classical and modern
literatures. At the University of Kentucky, she taught beginning Chinese,
gender politics in Chinese literature, Chinese film and literature, and a
course titled "All under Heaven: Conceptions of Chineseness over Time and
Space."
And at Wesleyan, this fall, she is teaching fourth-year Chinese and gender
politics in modern Chinese literature. In the future, she will teach classes
on Chinese film and culture.
“I’ve enjoyed the fact I am able to live across the cultures and help the
students to gain some knowledge about China and East Asia,” she says.
Wu, who worked as an editor for the Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House,
is the author of essays and a book in Chinese. Her research paper “ ‘Old
Learning’ and the Re-Feminization of Modern Space in the Lyric Poetry of Lü
Bicheng (1883-1943)” appeared in Modern
Chinese Literature and
Culture. She is preparing her book manuscript tentatively titled
The Treasured Pagoda in Ruins: Poetics
and Literati Communities in Modern China.
Wu resides in Middletown.
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| By
Olivia Bartlett, The Wesleyan Connection
editor |
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