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Thomas Chen

Tom Chen

Associate Professor of Chinese

Associate Chair

610.758.6062
thc316@lehigh.edu
0031 - Williams Hall
Education:

PhD in Comparative Literature, UCLA

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Research Areas

Additional Interests

  • Modern Chinese Literature and Film

Biography

In addition to an academic readership, I care about writing for a broader public too. To date I've published three times in the Los Angeles Review of Books, one piece on a documentary filmmaker's pandemic diary, another on a novel set in the Cultural Revolution, and a third that reviews a monograph on precarity in China. I've also published twice with the Modern Chinese Literature and Culture Resource Center: on the two versions of a censored film, and on a hit miniseries

Book

 

Made in Censorship: The Tiananmen Movement in Chinese Literature and Film (Columbia University Press, 2022)

 

Articles

 

“Remade in China: Rule of Law, Democracy, and the Chinese 12 Angry Men,” positions: asia critique 30.1 (2022), 137-158. 

 

“Surrogate Infrastructure: The Noncommercial Circulation of Chinese Films in the Early Cold War,” Comparative Literature Studies 57.3 (2020), 398-407.

                                   

“Blanks to be Filled: Public-Making and the Censorship of Jia Pingwa’s Decadent Capital,” China Perspectives 2015/1, 15-22. 

 

      “Remplir les blancs : «Publicité» et censure dans La Capitale déchue de Jia Pingwa,” Perspectives chinoises 2015/1, 15-23 (trans. Florent Chevallier).

 

      “有待填充的空格,” 《当代作家评论》2016/6, 52-61 (汪宝荣 译).

 

“An Italian Bicycle in the People’s Republic: Minor Transnationalism and the Chinese Translation of Ladri di biciclette/Bicycle Thieves,” Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies 1.2 (2014), 91-107.

 

      “Une bicyclette italienne en République populaire de Chine : À propos de la version chinoise du Voleur de bicyclette,” L’Écran traduit: revue sur la traduction et l’adaptation audiovisuelles no. 4 (automne 2015), 21-41 (trans. Jean-François Cornu).

 

“Ridiculing the Golden Age: Subversive Undertones in Yan Lianke’s Happy,” Chinese Literature Today (Winter-Spring 2011), 66-72. 

 

Book Chapters

 

“Cuicui’s Blush, Tianbao’s Corpse: Rereading Shen Congwen’s Border Town, Again.” In Культура в глобальном мире [Culture in the global world], ed. S.V. Ananyeva (Almaty: M. O. Auezov Institute of Literature and Art, 2020), 320-343. 

 

“The Workshop of the World: Censorship and the Internet Novel Such Is This World.” In China’s Contested Internet, ed. Guobin Yang (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2015), 19-43. 

 

“The Censorship of Mo Yan’s The Garlic Ballads,” in Mo Yan in Context: Nobel Laureate and Global Storyteller, eds. Angelica Duran and Yuhan Huang (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2014), 37-49.

Teaching

Fall 2024: Chinese Translation Workshop and Introduction to Film

 

Courses I've taught in the past:

Chinese (American) SF

Asian American Memoir

Chinese Film in the World

Introduction to Film

Films of the American West

Auteurs of Chinese Cinema

Senses of Cinema

Chinese Creative Writing

Chinese Literature in the World 

Letters from China

Chinese Film Art

Modern Chinese Civilization 

Chinese Translation Workshop

Understanding Hong Kong

Scandal and Sensation in Contemporary Chinese Culture

Electric Shadows: Chinese Cinema and Culture

China Pop

Protest Narratives in Modern China

The Art of the Chinese Essay