Faculty

Wei Shang

Wei Shang

Du Family Professor of Chinese Culture

Office: 404 Kent Hall
Office Hours: TBD
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:

江山勝跡：人文風景的建構與傳承 Cultural Landscape: Its Construction and Transformation, co-edited with Xiao Han. Beijing University Press, 2025, 299 pages.

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:

 “Theatrical Performance and Spectatorship in Dramatic Sanqu Writings Modeled on Zaban: From “The Country Pumpkin Knows Naught of the Theater” to “Gaozu Returns to His Hometown”, in Literature & Art Studies 文藝研究, 2025 (5): 5-37.

“Reflecting on the May-Fourth ‘Vernacularization Movement’: Discourse, Practice, and Historical Significance.” 國際漢學研究通訊 Newsletter for International China Studies, 2024 (28): 3-99.

“A Place Made Well Known by a Poem: Ji (跡）and Wen (文）in Landscape Poetry.” The Journal of Peking University, 2023 (5): 99-112.

“The Emergence of the Novel: From Outlaws of the Marsh to The Plum in the Golden Vase.” Approaches to Teaching The Plum in the Golden Vase (ed., Andrew Schonebaum). Modern Language Association of America, New York, 2022, pp. 310-327.

“Para-text and Narrative Time of Rulin Waishi.” Wenxue yichan 文學遺產 (Literary Heritage), 2021 (6): 4-16.

“On Rulin Waishi‘s Original Edition and Other Related Issues.” Gudian wenxue qianyan yu pinglun 古典文學前沿與評論 (Frontiers and Review of the Classical Chinese Literary Study), 2021 (2): 199-220.

A review article: “Toward a Theory of Traditional Chinese Theater and Performance Arts: A Review of A Remarkable Game: What is so Great about Peking Opera.” Wenyi yanjiu 文藝研究 (Literature and Art Studies), 2022 (4): 151-164.

“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.

Seunghyo Ryu

Seunghyo Ryu

Adjunct Lecturer in Korean

Email: sr2862@columbia.edu
Office: 502F Kent Hall
Office hours: After class or by appointment

Educational Background

MA: Applied Linguistics, Teacher’s College, Columbia University (2012)
MA: English Language and Literature, EWHA Women’s University (2006)
BA: English Language and Literature, EWHA Women’s University (2004)

Classes Taught
KORN UN1001 Introductory Korean A
KORN UN1002 Introductory Korean B
KORN UN1101 First Year Korean I
KORN UN1102 First Year Korean II
Research Interests

Second Language Acquistion, Sociolinguistics, Class pedagogy.

Seunghyo Ryu has taught Introductory Korean A since 2018 at Columbia. Before teaching Korean, she had worked as English/Korean translator in Seoul at a global law firm.

Morris Rossabi

Morris Rossabi

Adjunct Professor

Office Hours: T 9-10 AM
Email: mr63@columbia.edu

Educational Background

PhD: Columbia University (’70)

Classes Taught

HSEA UN3898 The Mongols in History
HIST GR6999 Graduate Seminar – History of the Mongols

Research Interests

Asian History

Morris Rossabi is a historian of China and Central and Inner Asia. He teaches courses on Inner Asian, East Asian, and Chinese history at Columbia. During the 2008–2009 academic year, he received an honorary doctorate from the National University of Mongolia. He and Mary Rossabi are involved in an oral history of 20th- and 21st-century Mongolia, which has led to the publication of Socialist Devotees and Dissenters; A Herder, a Trader, and a Lawyer; and The Practice of Buddhism in Kharkhorin and Its Revival (National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, 2010, 2012, and 2013). 

In 2006, he was named chair of the Arts and Culture Board of the Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation). He is the author of Herder to Statesman (Rowman and Littlefield, 2010); The Mongols and Global History (W. W. Norton, 2011); The Mongols: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2012); A History of China (Blackwell, 2013); Modern Mongolia: From Khans to Commissars to Capitalists (University of California Press, 2005); Khubilai Khan: His Life and Times (University of California Press, 1988), chosen as a main selection by the History Book Club; and China and Inner Asia (Universe Books, 1975). He is the editor of China Among Equals (University of California Press, 1983), Governing China’s Multi-Ethnic Frontiers (University of Washington Press, 2005) and Eurasian Influences on the Yuan (NIAS Press, 2013), and a contributor to several volumes of the Cambridge History of China. A collection of his articles has been published as From Yuan to Modern China and Mongolia (Brill, 2014). 

He has helped organize exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. He was on the advisory board of the Project on Central Eurasia of the Soros Foundation. The author of numerous articles and speeches, he travels repeatedly to Central Asia and Mongolia, where he teaches courses on Mongolian and East Asian history.

Selected Publications

The Mongols and Global History (W.W. Norton, 2010)

Modern Mongolia: From Khans to Commissars to Capitalists (University of California, 2005)

Khubilai Khan: His Life and Times (University of California, 1988)