Eugene Wang

Wai-yee Li (李惠儀) has transformed the study of Chinese literature through groundbreaking scholarship spanning early to late imperial periods. After earning her BA from the University of Hong Kong and PhD from Princeton University in 1987, she built an extraordinary career examining Chinese literary and cultural history. As the 1879 Professor of Chinese Literature at Harvard since 2000, she has authored influential works including "The Promise and Peril of Things" and "Women and National Trauma in Late Imperial Chinese Literature". Her research explores intersections between literature, gender, and historical memory, while her recent work examines material culture in late imperial China. A member of Academia Sinica since 2014, she has received numerous prestigious fellowships from institutions including the Guggenheim Foundation, NEH, and the American Academy in Berlin. Through her pioneering work on historiography, gender studies, and material culture, she continues to shape understanding of Chinese literature while teaching courses on Ming-Qing culture, early Chinese thought, and premodern fiction. Her current projects include translations of classical texts and studies of gender and friendship in Chinese literature.