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Stephen Owen

James Bryant Conant University Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University

Harvard University

Areas of expertise

  • - Medieval Chinese literature (200-1200)
  • - Premodern literature
  • - Lyric poetry
  • - Comparative poetics

Major works

"An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginnings to 1911. Norton, 1996.
The Making of Early Chinese Classical Poetry. Harvard University Asia Center, 2006.
The Late Tang: Chinese Poetry of the Mid-Ninth Century (827-860). Harvard University Asia Center, 2006. "

About me

Stephen Owen earned a B.A. (1968) and a Ph.D. (1972) in Chinese Language from Yale University. He taught there from 1972 to 1982, before coming to Harvard. In acknowledgment of his groundbreaking work that crosses the boundaries of multiple disciplines, Owen was awarded the James Bryant Conant University Professorship in 1997. He has been a Fulbright Scholar, held a Guggenheim Fellowship, and received a Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award (2006) among many other awards and honors. He specializes in premodern literature, lyric poetry, and comparative poetics.