Literature

Lening Liu

Lening Liu

Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Coordinator of Classical Chinese

Office: 626 Kent Hall
Office Hours: T/R 1PM-2:30PM
Phone: (212) 854-7036
Email: ll172@columbia.edu

Educational Background

PhD: Linguistics, University of Florida (1996)
MA: History of Chinese Language, Shaanxi Normal University (1985)
BA: Chinese Language and Literature, Shaanxi Normal University (1982)

Classes Taught

CHNS GU4516 Fifth Year Chinese I
CHNS GU4518 Fifth Year Chinese II
CHNS GU4301 Intro to Classical Chinese
CHNS GU4302 Introduction to Classical Chinese II
CHNS GR5001 Chinese Linguistic and Pedagogy

Research Interests

Linguistics
Historical Syntax
Discourse Grammar
Chinese Language Pedagogy

Lening Liu was born and raised in Xi’an, China. In 1977, right after the Cultural Revolution, he entered college as part of an extremely select group of students to finally end years of disruption of higher learning in China. He came to the United States in 1990 and studied linguistics at the University of Florida. He joined Columbia’s faculty in 1995 and received his Ph.D. in 1996. He has published a number of articles on the evolution of Chinese conjunctive adverbs, the rhetorical structures of Chinese, the history and innovation of Chinese pedagogy, etc. Courses he has taught include Introduction to Classical Chinese, Readings in Classical Chinese, History of Chinese Language, Educational Chinese Linguistics, Chinese Language Pedagogy and all levels of Modern Chinese. Currently, Liu is Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures. He also directs the Chinese Language Program and serves as the co-director of the Certificate Program of Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages.

Publications

Handbook for Chinese Teachers Beijing Language University Press, 2017; co-author)
Proceeding of the First International Conference on Modern Linguistics and Chinese Education (Beijing Language and Culture University Press, 2016; co-author)
Studying in China (Peking University Press, 2014; co-author)
Approaching China (Peking University Press, 2015; co-author)
A Course on Intercultural Communication (Higher Education Press, 2013; co-author)
Experiencing China (Peking University Press, 2013; co-author)
Contemporary Chinese Reader (Peking University Press, 2011; co-author)
International Standards for Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages (Foreign Language Study and Teaching Publisher, 2007; co-author)
Everyday Chinese (Thompson Publications, 2006; co-author)
Pedagogical Chinese Grammar (Beijing Language University Press, 2017)
Legal Chinese (Beijing, Foreign Language Study and Teaching Publisher, 2007; co-author)
A Primer of Classical Chinese (Columbia University Press; co-author)
A Primer of Chinese (Columbia University Press, 2003; co-author)
The Grammaticalization of Chinese Conjunctive Adverbs (The University of Michigan Press, 1996)
A Concise Dictionary of Chinese Traditional Linguistics (Shaanxi People’s Press, 1990; co-author).
A Study of Zhuoan Yunwu (Zhonghua Book House, 1988; co-author)

Tuo Li

Tuo Li

Adjunct Associate Research Scholar

Email: tl2258@columbia.edu

 

Tuo Li is a writer and critic from mainland China. He has written fiction and scripts for films and authored numerous essays on Chinese literature, cinema and art. He is the editor of several major Chinese literature anthologies, especially of experimental literature. His editorial responsibilities include influential literary journals Beijing Literature in the 1980s, Shijie (Horizons) in the 1990s-2000s, and currently Jintian (Today).

 

Theodore Hughes

Theodore Hughes

Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Studies in the Humanities

Office: 618 Kent Hall
Office Hours: WR 3:00 pm-4:00pm
Phone: (212) 854-8545
Email: th2150@columbia.edu

Educational Background

BA: University of California, San Diego (’90)
MA: University of California, Los Angeles (’97)
PhD: University of California, Los Angeles (’02)

Classes Taught

EAAS 3215 Korean Literature and Film
EAAS 3217 Korean Popular Cinema
EAAS 4124 South Korean Film as History
EAAS 4160 Cultures in Colonial Korea

Research Interests

Theodore Hughes received his PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles. His research interests include visual culture, film, literature, and history. He works across disciplines, with a particular interest in intermediality—the relations between visual and verbal forms of cultural production. He is the author of Death Without End: Korea and the Thanatographics of War (Columbia University Press, 2026) and Literature and Film in Cold War South Korea: Freedom’s Frontier (Columbia University Press, 2012), which was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title and won the James B. Palais Book Prize of the Association for Asian Studies for the best book in Korean studies in the year of its publication. Co-edited works include Intermedial Aesthetics: Korean Literature, Film, and Art (special issue of Journal of Korean Studies, 2015); and Rat Fire: Korean Stories from the Japanese Empire (Cornell East Asia Series, 2013), a finalist for the Daesan Literary Translation Prize. He is the translator of Panmunjom and Other Stories by Lee Ho-Chul (EastBridge, 2004; reissued under EastBridge imprint at Camphor Press, 2017). He is currently working on a project that approaches the Korean mystery novel as a form of historiography.

Selected Publications

Death Without End: Korea and the Thanatographics of War (Columbia University Press, 2026)

Rat Fire: Korean Stories from the Japanese Empire (co-editor, Cornell, 2013)
Literature and Film in Cold War South Korea: Freedom’s Frontier (Columbia, 2012)