Xian Wang

Biography

Professor Xian Wang’s research and teaching interests encompass modern Chinese literature, film, popular culture, gender and memory studies. Her current book project Flesh and Stone: Negotiating Memories of Chinese Female Revolutionary Martyrs examines how contested fictional and historical records, stone monuments and artistic representations of female martyrdom formed national memory. She is also conducting research on a second book project tentatively titled Producing Socialist China: The Aestheticization of Labor in Seventeen-year Literature (1949-1966). It examines the representations of “labor” and “production” in Chinese art and literature of the 1950s and 60s, and investigates the relationships between production and consumption, distribution and leisure. It explores how the idealization of selfless labor helped to create a new socialist ideology and the new socialist subject. Her research articles have appeared in Comparative Literature Studies and Ming Studies. She is the author of the book Creativity in China (2007) which addresses media, art and fashion industries in China.

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