Dr. Jing Zhang

Associate Professor of Chinese Language and Culture

International & Area Studies Director

Chinese Language & Literature | International & Area Studies | Literature | Medieval & Renaissance Studies

Education

Ph.D., Washington University in St. Louis
M.A., Peking University
B.A., Fudan University

Professor Zhang joined New College to start the Chinese program in 2007. She has since designed and taught Chinese language courses of all levels including an introduction to Classical Chinese. She has offered both survey and topical courses on Chinese literature and culture, covering periods, genres, writers, and literary movements of the pre-modern China extensively. Professor Zhang’s scholarly work focuses on the rise of vernacular fiction, theater, and book culture in the late Ming and Qing China. Her recent research examines book illustrations, a prominent feature of books printed in this period, as both a form of commentary and a visual attraction.

Literature Courses

Classical Chinese Literature: A Survey
Heroism in Classical Chinese Literature
Landscape in Chinese Literature and Film
Fantastic Tales and Idle Talks in Traditional China
Ghosts and Spirits in East Asian Traditions
The Cult of Love: Culture and Literature in the Late Ming and Qing China
Cinema and Cultural Memory: New Cinema in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China

 

Language Courses

First-Year Modern Chinese I & II
Second-Year Modern Chinese I & II
Third-Year Modern Chinese I & II
Advanced Reading in Modern Chinese
Introduction to Classical Chinese

 

Selected Publications

Selected Journal Articles and Book Chapters:

“‘I Wondered If It Was My Old Friend Coming’: Performing the Zhiyin Friendship in Tang Xianzu’s The Purple Flute,” in CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature. (Forthcoming)

“How to Stage a Prop: The Ceramic Pillow in The Story of Handan.” Cross-Generic Perspectives on Traditional Chinese Literature, ed. Manling Luo. Leiden: Brill, 2025: 98-122.

“Collecting and Collectors in A Sea of Tales Past and Present.” East Asian Publishing and Society, 14 (2024): 37-60.

“A Filial Publisher’s Unfilial Subjects: Printing, Literati Community, and Fiction-Making in Liushijia xiaoshuo.” Ming Qing Studies (2019): 111-138.

“版画、梦境、与戏台:试析天启闵刻朱墨套印本《邯郸梦记》中跨媒体对话创作” (“Illustrations, Dreamland, and Stage: An Analysis of the Intermediality in the Making of the Tianqi Polychrome Edition of The Story of Handan”). Yishu shoucang yu jian shang 艺术收藏与鉴赏 (Art Collecting and Appraisal) (2020): 91-118.

“In His Thievish Eyes: The Voyeur/Reader in Li Yu’s The Summer Pavilion.” Southeast Review of Asian Studies, 34 (2012): 25-42.

 

Translations

“The Little Beggar Who Was Truly Filial,” in Aina the Layman, Idle Talk under the Bean Arbor: A seventeenth-Century Chinese Story Collection, ed. Robert E. Hegel (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017), pp. 72-85.

“The Exalted Monks Who Faked Transcendence,” in Aina the Layman, Idle Talk under the Bean Arbor: A seventeenth-Century Chinese Story Collection, ed. Robert E. Hegel (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017), pp. 86-100.

 

Book Reviews

Writing Gender in Early Modern Chinese Women’s Tanci Fiction, by Li Guo (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2021). China Review International, 27 (2023): 197-200.

Western Han: A Yangzhou Storyteller’s Script, ed. & trans. by Vibeke Børdahl and Liangyan Ge (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2017). China Review International, 24 (2017): 11-14.