Yunjing Xu

Educational Background

Ph.D. in Chinese and comparative literature from Washington University in St. Louis, with a graduate certificate in women, gender, and sexuality studies.

Research Interests

Yunjing Xu studies the lives and writings of Chinese literati during the early modern period, with a focus on the cultural exchanges between Chinese Catholics and Jesuit missionaries. Her dissertation studies how three seventeenth-century male writers explore their identity as Chinese Catholic literati through writing and the dissemination of their texts within their communities.

Xu is also interested in the development of xiaoshuo (fiction) as a genre and its connection with the storytelling art of the lower-Yanzi river delta throughout the twentieth century. Her recent translation of the short story “Freeloader Jia Forms a League on Tiger Hill” (co-translated with Robert E. Hegel) is included in the Idle Talk Under the Bean Arbor: A Seventeenth-Century Chinese Story Collection (forthcoming 2017).

Teaching specialties:

Modern and Classical Chinese languages
Introduction to Chinese dulture
Late-imperial Chinese fiction
Performing arts in China
Writing women of imperial China

Publications

Journal article and book chapter:

"Memories and Places in Twentieth-Century Suzhou Tanci." CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature 42.1 (July 2023): 1–27.

"Jidujiao wenxue zai Zhongguo de chuanbo: yi qingshi jinshu wei zhongxin" 基督教文學在中國的傳播——以《輕世金書》爲中心 (The Spread of Christian Literature in China: A Case study on Qingshi jinshu [De Imitatione Christi]), In Dongya yu Ouzhou wenhua zaoqi de xiangyu 東亞與歐洲文化早期的相遇 (The Early Encounter between East Asian and European Cultures). Edited by Zhang Xiping. Shanghai: Huadong Shifan Daxue, 2012.

Book reviews:

Nadine Amsler. Jesuits and Matriarchs: Domestic Worship in Early Modern China. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2018). Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, vol. 88, FASC. 175, 2019-I.

YANG Huilin. China, Christianity, and the Question of Culture. Edited by Zhang Jing. (Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2014). Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies, Oct. 2015.

Translation:

"Freeloader Jia forms a League on Tiger Hill." Co-translated with Robert E. Hegel. In Idle Tales Under the Bean Arbor, edited by Robert E. Hegel. Seattle: University of Washington, 2017.