My name is WEI Li 魏勵. I’m a scholar of premodern Chinese literature. My research focuses on Chinese popular and religious literature of the early modern period, especially fiction and drama in the Ming and Qing dynasties.
My dissertation, entitled “Apparition and Angst: Literary Portraits of Late Nineteenth Century China,” offers one of the first systematic textual analyses and translations of the so-called “tales of recent extraordinary affairs”—which typically include stories of ghosts, strange people, and weird happenings—published by China’s first modern newspaper house during the final years of the Qing, China’s last imperial dynasty.
I am currently an Assistant Teaching Professor of Chinese and Cornerstone at Purdue University. Thanks for stopping by!