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Wai-yee Li

Professor of Chinese Literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University

Harvard University

Areas of expertise

  • - Late imperial Chinese literature
  • - Early Chinese thought and historiography
  • - Gender and sexuality
  • - Premodern fiction and drama

Major works

"Women and National Trauma in Late Imperial Chinese Literature. Harvard University Asia Center, 2014.
The Readability of the Past in Early Chinese Historiography. Harvard University Asia Center, 2007.
Enchantment and Disenchantment: Love and Illusion in Chinese Literature. Princeton University Press, 1993."

About me

Wai-yee Li has been Professor of Chinese Literature at Harvard since 2000. Li earned her B.A. from the University of Hong Kong and her Ph.D. from Princeton University (1987), where she was associate professor from 1996 to 2000. She also taught at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Li’s research spans topics ranging from early Chinese thought and narrative to late imperial Chinese literature and culture.