China

Wei Shang

Wei Shang

Du Family Professor of Chinese Culture

Office: 404 Kent Hall
Office Hours: On leave for the fall 2020 semester
Phone: (212) 854-1526
Email: ws110@columbia.edu

Educational Background

BA: Peking University (’82)
MA: Peking University (’84)
PhD: Harvard University (’95)

Classes Taught

AHUM UN1400 Colloquium on Major Texts: East Asia
CHNS GU4507 Readings in Classical Chinese
EAAS GR8030 Pre-Modern Chinese Fiction

Research Interests

Pre-modern Chinese Literature, Cultural and Intellectual History with special attention to Fiction and Drama of the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911).

Professor Wei Shang specializes in pre-modern Chinese literature and culture, especially the fiction and drama of the Ming and Qing dynasties. His research interests also include print culture, book history and intellectual history of the same period. His book “Rulin Waishi” and Cultural Transformation in Late Imperial China (2003) addresses the role of Confucian ritualism and fiction in shaping the intellectual and cultural changes of the eighteenth century. His other publications are concerned with Jin Ping Mei Cihua (The Plum in the Golden Vase), late Ming culture, fiction commentary, and medieval poetry, including Writing on Landmarks: From Yellow Crane Tower to Phoenix Pavilion (2020). He is the editor and co-editor of several volumes in both English and Chinese, and a contributor to The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature (2010).

Selected Publications

Books:

Rulin Waishi and Cultural Transformation in Late Imperial China. Harvard University Asian Center, 2003.

Writing on Landmarks: From Yellow Crane Tower to Phoenix Pavilion (Tixie mingsheng: cong huanghe lou dao fenghuang tai). Beijing: Sanlian Publishing House, 2020.

Old-Style Prose: An Annotated Anthology for Young Readers (Gei haizi de guwen). Beijing: Moveable Type, 2019.

Dynastic Crisis and Cultural Innovation: From the Late Ming to the Late Qing and Beyond (co-edited with David Der-wei Wang). Harvard University Asian Center, 2005.

A special issue of Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture: Literature and Visual Culture in Early Modern China (co-edited with Xingpei Yuan), Duke University Press, 2015.

Articles:

“Fictional Performances: Royal Birthday Ceremonies and the Self-Imagination of the Empire in Yesou puyan”. Literary Heritage (Wenxue yichan), no. 3, 2017: 155-167.

“The Formation of a Poly-textual Novel:  From The Water Margin to The Plum in the Golden Vase”. The Journal of Fudan University, no. 5, 2016: 31-58.

“A Lively Illusion: Occidental Lens, Linear Perspective, and the Phantom of the Grand Prospect Garden” (I, II, III). Studies of Cao Xueqin (Cao Xueqin yanjiu), no. 1, 2, 3, 2016: 95-117 (I); 103-123 (II); (38-62 (III).

“Truth Becomes Fiction When Fiction is True: The Story of the Stone and the Visual Culture of the Manchu Court”.  A special issue of Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture: Literature and Visual Culture in Early Modern China, October 2015: 207-248.

“Writing and Speech: Rethinking the Issue of Vernaculars in Early Modern China”, Rethinking East Asian Languages, Vernaculars, and Literacies, 1000-1919 (edited by Benjamin Elman). Brill: Leiden/Boston, 2014: 254-301.

Shaoyan Qi

Shaoyan Qi

Senior Lecturer in Chinese

Office: 510 Kent Hall
Office Hours: W 2:15-5:15
Phone: (212) 854-3604
Email: sq2106@columbia.edu

Educational Background

EdD: Applied Linguistics, Teachers College, Columbia University
MA: Education, Villanova University
MA: Linguistic and Socio-cultural Anthropology, State University of New York at Binghamton

Classes Taught

CHNS UN2201 Second Year Chinese N I
CHNS UN2202 Second Year Chinese N II
CHNS UN1010 Introductory Chinese
CHNS GU 4904 Acquisition of Chinese as a Second Language

Research Interests

Instructed Second Language Acquisition
Chinese Language Pedagogy
Task-Based Language Teaching

Shaoyan’s teaching career began at a weekend school for children adopted from China in a suburban area of Philadelphia. Before she joined Columbia at 2004, she taught Chinese language at Bryn Mawr, Haverford, Princeton, and Middlebury Summer School. Shaoyan has taught all levels of Chinese language classes and linguistic courses at both Columbia and Teachers College.  She is the main author of the award-winning textbook series Discover China (http://www.mydiscoverchina.com/components/ ). 

Publications

Implementing TBLT in an online Chinese class for beginners (2024), in Lambert C. (ed) Designing tasks for teaching foreign languages, Cambridge University Press.

Introduction: Why should second/foreign language teachers tune in to instructed SLA? (2015). Working Papers in TESOL and Applied Linguistics, 15 (2), pp. i-iv. Teacher’s College, Columbia University: New York

Discover China (2014). Macmillan: Hong Kong

Computer-assisted second language teaching, learning, and research (2011). Working Papers in TESOL and Applied Linguistics, 11 (2), pp. 27-28. Teacher’s College, Columbia University.

“The Selective Fossilization Hypothesis and its Putative Implications for Second Language Teaching” “Working Papers in TESOL and Applied Linguistics, 2009)

Book Contribution Chinese Grammar Made Easy—A practical and effective guide for teachers (Yale University Press, 2008)

“Questions for Pedagogy and Research” (Working Papers in TESOL and Applied Linguistics, 2007)

Ying Qian

ying_qianYing Qian

Associate Professor

Office: 930 IAB
Office Hours: F 4 PM-6 PM, Appointment required

Phone: (212)854-5027
Email: yq2189@columbia.edu

Educational Background

AB: Harvard University
MPhil: University of Cambridge, UK
PhD: Harvard University (’13)

Classes Taught

EAAS UN3322 East Asian Cinema
EAAS GU4572 Chinese Documentary Cinema
EAAS GR8998 Media Cultures in China

Research Interests

Chinese-language cinema and media; transnational media histories; media of activism, reform
and critique; media ecology and knowledge formation
As a scholar of cinema and media, Ying Qian is interested in the role of media and mediation in
shaping politics, forming knowledge, and connecting realms of experience. Her first
book, Revolutionary Becomings: Documentary Media in Twentieth-Century China (Columbia
University Press, 2024) excavates documentary’s multi-faceted productivities in China’s
revolutionary movements, from the toppling of the Qing Empire in 1911 to the political
campaigns and mass protests in the Mao and post-Mao eras. It approaches documentary as an
“eventful medium,” and as a prism to examine the mutual constitution of media and revolution:
how revolutionary movements gave rise to specific media practices, and how these media
practices in turn contributed to the specific paths of revolution’s actualization. She’s now
working on a new monograph on media and the ecologies of knowledge in China’s reform and
opening. Ying Qian’s articles have appeared in Critical Inquiry, New Left Review, China
Perspectives, New Literary History of Modern China, Oxford Handbook of Chinese
Cinemas, and other journals and websites. At Columbia, she teaches classes on East Asian
cinema, Chinese media cultures, documentary media, media of science and technology, and
comparative media theory and history. Drawing from her experiences in filmmaking, she has
incorporated creative assignments in her classes, guiding students to try their hands on media
productions.

Selected Publications

Revolutionary Becomings: Documentary Media in Twentieth-Century China (Columbia
University Press, 2024)

“When Taylorism Met Revolutionary Romanticism: Documentary Cinema in China’s Great Leap
Forward”, Critical Inquiry (Spring 2020).

“The Spectre of Liu Shaoqi,” in A New Literary History of Modern China (Harvard, 2017)
“Working with Rubble: Montage, Tweets, and the Reconstruction of an Activist Cinema,”
in China’s iGeneration: Filmmakers, Films and Audiences in a New Media Age (Continuum,
2014)

“Power in the Frame: Independent Documentary in China,” The New Left Review (2012)