Robert Ashmore is associate professor of classical Chinese literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He received his M.A. from Beijing University in 1992 and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1997. His interests include lyric poetry, musical performance, and classical scholarship from the third through twelfth centuries. He is the author of The Transport of Reading: Text and Understanding in the World of Tao Qian (365–427) (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, forthcoming).
Zong-qi Cai is professor of Chinese and comparative literature at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of The Matrix of Lyric Transformation: Poetic Modes and Self-Presentation in Early Chinese Pentasyllabic Poetry (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1996) and Configurations of Comparative Poetics: Three Perspectives on Western and Chinese Literary Criticism (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2002). He also edited A Chinese Literary Mind: Culture, Creativity, and Rhetoric in Wenxin dialong (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001) and Chinese Aesthetics: The Ordering of Literature, the Arts, and the Universe in the Six Dynasties (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2004).
Charles Egan is associate professor of Chinese language and literature at San Francisco State University, where he also directs the Chinese program. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1992 and has taught at Stanford University and Connecticut College. He has published articles on yuefu, jueju, oral poetry, and Chinese art, as well as numerous translations.
Ronald Egan teaches Chinese literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research is on Song dynasty poetry, aesthetics, and literati culture. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and has taught at Harvard University and Wellesley College. He served for a period as the executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. His publications include The Literary Works of Ou-yang Hsiu (1007–72) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), Word, Image, and Deed in the Life of Su Shi (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), and The Problem of Beauty: Aesthetic Thought and Pursuits in Northern Song Dynasty China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, forthcoming). He is also the translator of a volume of selected essays by Qian Zhongshu: Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters by Qian Zhongshu (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998).
Grace S. Fong is associate professor and chair of the Department of East Asian Studies at McGill University. Her research interests encompass classical Chinese poetry and poetics and the intersection of gender, subjectivity, and writing in late imperial and Republican China. She is the author of Wu Wenying and the Art of Southern Song Ci Poetry (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987) and Herself an Author: Gender, Writing, and Agency in Late Imperial China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008); coeditor of Beyond Tradition and Modernity: Gender, Genre, and Cosmopolitanism in Late Qing China (Leiden: Brill, 2004); and project editor of Ming–Qing Women’s Writings: A Joint Digitization Project Between McGill University and Harvard-Yenching Library, Harvard University (http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/mingqing/).
David R. Knechtges is professor of Chinese literature at the University of Washington. He is the author of Two Studies on the Han Fu (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968), The Han Rhapsody: A Study of the Fu of Yang Hsiung (53 B.C.–A.D. 18) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), The Han shu Biography of Yang Xiong (53 B.C.–A.D. 18) (Tempe: Arizona State University, 1982), and Court Culture and Literature in Early China (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002). He is the translator of Xiao Tong, Wenxuan, or Selections of Refined Literature, vol. 1, Rhapsodies on Metropolises and Capitals (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982), vol. 2, Rhapsodies on Sacrifices, Hunting, Travel, Sightseeing, Palaces and Halls, Rivers and Seas (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987), and vol. 3, Rhapsodies on Natural Phenomena, Birds and Animals, Aspirations and Feelings, Sorrowful Laments, Literature, Music, and Passions (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996); editor and cotranslator of Gong Kechang, Studies on the Han Fu (New Haven, Conn.: American Oriental Society, 1997); and coeditor (with Paul W. Kroll) of Studies in Early Medieval Chinese Literature and Cultural History: In Honor of Richard B. Mather and Donald Holzman (Provo, Utah: T’ang Studies Society, 2003) and (with Eugene Vance) of Rhetoric and the Discourses of Power in Court Culture: China, Europe, and Japan (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005).
Xinda Lian received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and is currently associate professor of Chinese at Denison University. He is the author of The Wild and Arrogant: Expression of Self in Xin Qiji’s Song Lyrics (New York: Lang, 1999) and a variety of articles on Chinese literature.
Shuen-fu Lin is professor of Chinese literature at the University of Michigan. He is the author of The Transformation of the Chinese Lyrical Tradition: Chiang K’uei and Southern Sung Tz’u Poetry (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978) and The Pursuit of Utopias (in Chinese) (Taichung: Tunghai University Press, 2003). He is also coeditor (with Stephen Owen) of The Vitality of the Lyric Voice: Shih Poetry from the Late Han to the T’ang (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986) and cotranslator (with Larry J. Schulz) of Tung Yüeh, The Tower of Myriad Mirrors: A Supplement to Journey to the West, 2nd ed. (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 2000).
William H. Nienhauser Jr. is Halls-Bascom Professor for Classical Chinese Literature at the University of Wisconsin. In 1979, he helped found Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR) and is still its editor. Among his numerous books and articles are The Grand Scribe’s Records, vols. 1, 2, 5, 7 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994, 2002, 2006) and The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature, 2 vols. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986, 1998).
Maija Bell Samei is an independent scholar who teaches part-time at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received her Ph.D. in Chinese literature from the University of Michigan and is the author of Gendered Persona and Poetic Voice: The Abandoned Woman in Early Chinese Song Lyrics (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2004).
Jui-lung Su is associate professor of Chinese literature at the National University of Singapore. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1994 and has taught at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the National University of Singapore. His research is on Chinese fu and Six Dynasties literature. He is the editor of New Views of Han, Wei, and Six Dynasties Literature in the Twenty-first Century: A Festschrift in Honor of Professor David R. Knechtges on His Sixtieth Birthday (Taipei: Wenjin, 2003) and author of A Study of Bao Zhao’s Literature (Bao Zhao shiwen yanjiu) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2006).
Wendy Swartz is assistant professor of Chinese Literature at Columbia University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2003. Her research interests are premodern Chinese poetry, especially Six Dynasties to Tang, and traditional and modern literary theory and criticism. She has published on Tao Qian (Tao Yuanming) and is currently completing her book Reclusion, Personality, and Poetry: Tao Yuanming’s Reception in the Chinese Literary Tradition.
Xiaofei Tian is professor of Chinese literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. She is the author of Tao Yuanming and Manuscript Culture: The Record of a Dusty Table (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005) and Beacon Fire and Shooting Star: The Literary Culture of the Liang (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Asia Center Press, 2007). Her recent Chinese-language publications include a book on the sixteenth-century novel The Plum in the Golden Vase (2003), an annotated translation of Sappho’s poetry (2004), and a book on the literature and culture of Moorish Spain (2006). She has also published a number of English and Chinese articles and book reviews in the areas of early medieval Chinese literature, late imperial Chinese fiction and drama, and modern Chinese literature. She is currently working on an English-language book on visualization and its changing cultural contexts in classical Chinese literature.
Paula Varsano is associate professor of Chinese literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She specializes in classical poetry and poetics of the Six Dynasties and the Tang, with particular interest in literature and subjectivity, the evolution of spatial representation in poetry, the history and poetics of traditional literary criticism, and the theory and practice of translation. She is the author of Tracking the Banished Immortal: The Poetry of Li Bo and Its Critical Reception (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2003) and is currently at work on a book tentatively titled Coming to Our Senses: Locating the Subject in Traditional Chinese Literary Writing.
Fusheng Wu is associate professor in the Department of Languages and Literature at the University of Utah. He is the author of The Poetics of Decadence: Chinese Poetry of the Southern Dynasties and Late Tang Period (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988) and Written at Imperial Command: Panegyric Poetry in Early Medieval China (Albany: State University of New York Press, forthcoming), as well as of many articles on Chinese literature and comparative literature. He has also published many translations of literary and scholarly works. He is the cotranslator of Songs of My Heart: The Chinese Lyric Poetry of Ruan Ji (London: Wellsweep, 1988) and the bilingual edition of The Poems of Ruan Ji (Beijing: Zhonghua, 2006).