Professor CHEN Xiaomei（陳小眉教授）

Professor Xiaomei Chen received her BA degree in English from Beijing Institute of Foreign Languages. She received her master’s degree in English and Comparative Literature from Brigham Young University and a doctoral degree in Comparative Literature from Indiana University in. She was recruited by Stanford University Humanities Center for a post-doctoral fellowship and worked from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor at the Ohio State University. 

Before joining the HSUHK, Professor Chen worked as Distinguished Professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature at the University of California at Davis. She taught modern Chinese literature, film, theater, popular culture, and comparative literature. Having grown up in a celebrated theater family in China and with intimate knowledge of the Chinese stage, she has published influential books such as Occidentalism (1995), Acting the Right Part (2002), Staging Chinese Revolution (2016), and Performing the Socialist State (2023). Her edited book, The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama, has been widely adopted as a standard textbook in teaching Chinese theater in the English-speaking world. She is the editor of Reading the Right Text, and with Claire Sponsler, of East of West; with Julia Andrew, of Visual Culture in Contemporary China, and with Siyuan Liu, Hong Shen and the Modern Mediasphere in Republican-Era China. Her latest co-edited book, with Tarryn Chun and Siyuan Liu, was elected as the winner for Excellence in Editing Award, awarded by the Association of Theatre for Higher Education (ATHE). The award honors both individual achievements in editing and sustained achievement in editing over extended periods of time.

Research Interest(s)

• Modern Chinese literature
• Drama
• Theater
• Women’s literature
• Comparative literature
• Literary theory
• Cultural studies
• Performance studies

Selected Publications – Books

•  Performing the Socialist State: Modern Chinese Theater and Film Culture. Columbia University Press, 2023.
• Staging Chinese Revolution: Theater, Film and the Afterlives of Propaganda. Columbia University Press, 2016. 
• Acting the “Right” Part: Political Theater and Popular Drama in Contemporary China. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002.
• Occidentalism: A Theory of Counter-discourse in Post-Mao China. Oxford University Press, 1995.

Edited Books

• Rethinking Chinese Socialist Theaters of Reform: Performance Practice and Debate in the Mao Era. Eds., Xiaomei Chen, Tarryn Li-Min Chun, and Steven Siyuan Liu. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2021.
• Hong Shen and the Modern Mediasphere in Republican-Era China. A Special Issue for the journal, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture. Vol. 27, no. 2. Eds., Steven Siyuan Liu and Xiaomei Chen. Columbus: Ohio State University, 2015.
• Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama with a Critical Introduction. Abridged Edition, New York: Columbia University Press, 2014.
• Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama with a Critical Introduction. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. (Content/Reviews)
• Reading the Right Text: An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Drama with a Critical Introduction. Ed., Xiaomei Chen, University of Hawaii Press, 2003. (“A Critical Introduction”)
• East of West: Cross-cultural Performance and the Staging of Difference. Eds., Claire Sponsler and Xiaomei Chen. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001.
• Visual Culture and Memory in Modern China. A Special Issue on Visual Culture in Twentieth-century China for the journal, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture. Eds., Julia F. Andrews and Xiaomei Chen. Columbus: Ohio State University, 2001.

Recent Articles and Book Chapters

• “New Studies in Socialist Performance: A Review Essay” (On Staging Revolution: Artistry and Aesthetics in Model Beijing Opera during the Cultural Revolution, by Xing Fan, and Revolutionary Bodies: Chinese Dance and the Socialist Legacy, by Emily Wilcox). Modern Chinese Literature and Culture (MCLC), June 2020. https://u.osu.edu/mclc/book-reviews/xiaomei-chen/
• “The East Is Red, or Is It?–1964: The ‘Red Pageant’ and China’s First Atomic Bomb.” A New Literary History of Modern China, eds, David Wang and others.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press. (2017)
• Singing ‘The Internationale’: From the ‘Red Silk Road’ to the Red Classics.”  Oxford Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature, eds., Carlos Rojas and Andrea Bachner.  New York: Oxford University Press. (2016)
• “Performing the ‘Red Classics’: From The East is Red to The Road to Revival.” Red Legend in China, eds. Jie Li and Enhau Zhang. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 151-183, 2016.
• “Breaking out of the ‘Main Melody’”: Meng Bing and his “Monumental Theatre.” Staging China: New Theatres in the Twentieth-First Century, ed., Ruru Li.  New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 79-96, 2016.
• “Modern Chinese Theater Study and its Century-Long History.” Blackwell History of Modern Chinese Literature, ed. Yingjin Zhang. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell. 167-180, 2015.
• “Mapping a ‘New’ Dramatic Canon: Rewriting the Legacy of Hong Shen,” Modern China and the West: Translation and Cultural Mediation, eds. Peng Hsiao-yen and Isabelle Rabur. Leiden: Brill.  224-245, 2014.
• “A Critical Introduction.” Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama. Abridged Edition. New York: Columbia University Press. 1-30, 2014.
• “The Cinematic Deng Xiaoping: Scripting a Leader or a ‘Traitor’?” China’s iGeneration: Cinema and Moving Image Culture for the Twenty-First Century, eds. Matthew D. Johnson, Keith B. Wagner and others. London: Bloomsbury. 283-198, 2014.
• “Yanyi hongse jingdian: sanda geming yinyue wudao shishi jiqi heping huigui” 演繹“紅色經典”: 三大革命音樂舞蹈史詩及其和平回歸 (Performing the Red Classics: Three Revolutionary Music and Dance Epics and their Peaceful Restoration), trans., Xuefeng Feng. Huanren wenxue 《華文文學》(Overseas Chinese Literature) 1 (2014): 5-27.
• “Zhongguo de huixin—yuedu haiwai huaren de gushi” 中國的回信－閱讀海外華人作家的故事 (China Writes Back—Reading Stories of the Chinese Diaspora), trans., Xuefeng Feng. Huanren wenxue《華文文學》(Overseas Chinese literature) 2 (2013): 69-88.
• “The Road to Revival: A ‘Red’ Classic or a ‘Black’ Revisionist Epic in Praise of a Postsocialist China,” China and New Left Visions: Political and Cultural Interventions, eds. Ban Wang and Lu Jie. Lanham: Lexington Books, 183-203, 2012.
• “Chen Duxiu yingshi wushi nian” 陳獨秀影視五十年 (Fifty years of representing Chen Duxiu in films and television drama series), trans., Xuefeng Feng. Chen Xiaomei zhuanji (Featuring Xiaomei Chen) 陳小眉專輯, Huanren wenxue 《華文文學》(Overseas Chinese literature) 1 (2012): 25-33.
• “Bei wudu de xifang zhuyi—lun ‘menglong shi yundong’” 被誤讀的西方現代主義——論朦朧詩運動 （Misunderstanding Western modernism—on Menglong movement), trans., Xuefeng Feng. Chen Xiaomei zhuanji (Featuring Xiaomei Chen) 陳小眉專輯, Huanren wenxue 《華文文學》 (Overseas Chinese literature) 1 (2012): 34-54.
• “Worker-Peasant-Soldier Literature,” Words and Their Stories: Essays on the Language of the Chinese Revolution, ed. Ban Wang. Leiden: Brill, 65-83, 2011.
• “Xunzhao chuantong: xinshiqi qianqi xiju zhong de xingshi yu neirong”  尋找傳統：新時期前期戲劇中的形式與內容  (A stage in search of a tradition: the dynamics of form and content in post-Maoist theater). trans., Liu Jia, Yishu pinglun 《藝術評論》(Art Criticism) 6 (2011): 34-38.
• “A Critical Introduction,” in Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama with a Critical Introduction, ed., Xiaomei Chen. New York: Columbia University Press, 1-55, 2010.
• “Fifty Years of Staging A Founding Father: Political Theater, Dramatic History and the Question of Representation,” in Representing the Past: Essays on the Historiography of Performance, eds., Thomas E. Postlewait and Charlotte Canning. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 309-333, 2010.
• “Qizi de chuanshuo–hou shehui zhuyi shiqi “hongse jingdian” dianying de wenxue gaibian jiqi yiyi 妻子的傳說－－後社會主義時期“紅色經典”電影的文學改編及其意義 (The tales of the wife–literary adaptations of the “red classical” films and their postsocialist reinscriptions), trans., Qingjing Shi, in Xingbie yu Zhongguo Dianying 性別與中國電影 （Gender and Chinese cinema), ed., Chengzhou He.  Nanjing: Nanjing University Press, 36-53, 2010.

Courses Taught

• ENG2102  Drama and Theatre
• ENG4320  Film & Literature