Faculty-Discipline

Ling Yan

Ling Yan

Senior Lecturer in Chinese

Office: 512 Kent Hall
Office Hours: TR 11:15am-12:45pm
Phone: (212) 854-3594
Email: ly2131@columbia.edu

Educational Background

PhD: Linguistics, University of Kansas (2005)
MA: Applied Linguistics, Northwestern Polytechnical University (1996)
BA: British Literature, Northwest University (1986)

Classes Taught

CHNS UN1101 First Year Chinese I
CHNS UN1102 First Year Chinese II
CHNS GU4015 Fourth Year Chinese I
CHNS GU4016 Fourth Year Chinese II

Research Interests

Linguistics
Second Language Acquisition
Chinese Teaching Pedagogy and Culture
Syntax and Prosodic-Syntax

Ling Yan started teaching Chinese in 1999 and has taught Chinese at all levels. She joined the Columbia faculty in 2004. In addition to teaching, she also serves as the Coordinator of Elementary Chinese. Before joining Columbia, she played an active role as a summer instructor at the University of Kansas.

Publications

Approaching China Textbook (1st Year) (Pekin University Press, 2015)
“Yuti (Register-Stylistic) Grammar and Textbook Compiling” (Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association, 2013; co-author)
“An Analysis of the Chinese Prosodic Words in Rewritten Chinese” (Proceedings of The 18th Annual Meeting of the International Association of Chinese Linguistics (IACL) and 22th Annual North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics (NACCL), 2010)
201 Chinese Verbs (2nd edition) (Barrons Educational Series, Inc., 2007; co-author)
“A Statistic Analysis of VP Prosody in Modern Chinese Writing” (Harvard University Proceedings on New Trend of Chinese Written Language Teaching and Studies, 2005; co-author)
“The Syntax of the Ba-constructions” (Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics, 2004)

Lili Xia

Lili Xia

Assistant Professor of Premodern Chinese Literature, Barnard College

Office:  317 Milbank Hall, Barnard College

Office Hours: On leave in fall 2026
W 4:10–6:00pm & by appointment in spring 2027

Email:  lxia@barnard.edu

Educational Background

BA: Fudan University
MA: Fudan University
PhD: Princeton University

Classes Taught

FYSB BC1001 Cultural Memory
AHUM UN1400 Colloquium on Major Texts: East Asia
EAAS BC3840 Beyond the Great Wall: Nomadic Empires and China
EAAS GU4370 Literati Culture in Pre-Modern China
EAAS GR8383 Crossroads in Middle-Period China: Topics of Song-Jin-Yuan Literary Culture

Research Interests

Lili Xia is a scholar of premodern Chinese literature. Her broader research interests include Sino-steppe interactions, cultural memory, print and book culture, intermediality, and digital humanities.

She is now working on her book project titled “North against South in Middle Period China: Classical Poetry and Literati Culture under Jurchen Jin Rule (1115–1234).” By demonstrating a rival narrative of claiming China in the Sino-Jurchen North against the cultural orthodoxy conceptualized in the Han Chinese-ruled South, the book illustrates the burgeoning literati culture under Jurchen rule, and fleshes out the Jin poetic production in particular. While making full use of Jin literary texts, this book is further enriched by art history and material culture, as well as digital tools of social network and geographic analysis to better represent Jin literati culture on the whole. Her research aims to reveal the heterotopia and heteroglossia of China as an intersubjective, transcultural, and border-crossing space in the Middle Period (800–1400 CE).

Before coming to Barnard, she received her B.A. and M.A. in Classical Chinese Literature at Fudan University, and her Ph.D. in East Asian Studies at Princeton University. She was the 2023–24 Louis Frieberg Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Asian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is currently a 2026 visiting fellow at the Ying-shih Yü International Center for History and the Chinese Humanities (YCHCH), National Taiwan University.

Selected Publications

“Teaching Sinitic Knowledge of the Universal Ruler in Jin-Yuan Court Lectures and Civil Education.” Journal of Song-Yuan Studies 55 (2026): 54–102.

“To Build or Not to Build? Frontier Walls, Trenches, and Forts in Mid-Jin Politics, 1161–1208.” Co-authored with Johannes S. Lotze, Zhidong Zhang, and Gideon Shelach-Lavi. T’oung Pao 112 (2026): 163–214.

“Qiuchi as Heterotopia: The Other Space for Su Shi.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 142.1 (2022): 93–119.

“Two Narratives of ‘Grand Peace’ in Northern Song Historiography and the Song Cultural Memory” (北宋仁、徽兩朝的“太平敍事”與宋人文化記憶). Zhonghua wenshi luncong (Journal of Chinese Literature and History) 139 (2020): 219–40. (in Chinese)

Mihoko Yagi

Mihoko Yagi

Lecturer in Japanese

Office: 516 Kent Hall
Office Hours: Wed & Thur 3-4 PM
Phone: (212) 854-3594
Email: my2891@columbia.edu

Educational Background

Ed.M: TESOL, Boston University
BA: Literature, Waseda University

Classes Taught

JPNS 1002 Introductory Japanese B
JPNS 1101 First Year Japanese I

Research Interests

Language Pedagogy

Mihoko Yagi joined the Japanese Language Program at Columbia in
2024. She received her BA in literature from Waseda University and her
Ed.M in teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) from
Boston University. Prior to joining Columbia, she taught at Harvard
University and Boston University, where she had extensive experience
of teaching Japanese at various levels. She has also served as a Japanese
language department assistant at DePauw University. She is passionate
about bridging students’ learning in class to the real world.