Wei Shang

Associate professor of Chinese literature, department of East Asian languages and cultures

Chinese literature and culture in late imperial times (1368-1911)

Since joining the Columbia faculty in 1997, Professor Shang has engaged in several projects resulting in publication: From the Late Ming to the Late Qing and Beyond: Dynastic Crisis and Cultural Innovation, co-edited with David Der-wei Wang (Harvard East Asian Center, forthcoming) and The Columbia Book of Yuan Drama, co-edited with C.T. Hsia and George Kao (Columbia University Press, 2005). His recent book, Rulin waishi and Cultural Transformation in Late Imperial China (Harvard University Press, 2003), is a comprehensive study of Rulin waishi (“The unofficial history of the scholars”), considered an eighteenth-century landmark for the literati novel. Professor Shang's book also grapples with the eighteenth-century debates over ritual and ritualism, the construction of history, narrative, and lyricism. His research reveals Rulin waishi as both a product of and a powerful response by a Confucian intellectual to cultural transformation in late imperial China, the transformation that brought an end to the Confucian world order. His other publications include “Jin Ping Mei Cihua and Late Ming Print Culture,” in Judith Zeitlin and Lydia Liu (eds.), Writing and Materiality in China, (Harvard University Asian Center, 2003); “The Making of the Everyday World: Jin Ping Mei Cihua and Encyclopedias for Daily Use,” in From the Late Ming to the Late Qing and Beyond: Dynastic Crisis and Cultural Innovation ; “Ritual, Ritual Manuals, and the Crisis of the Confucian World: An Interpretation of Rulin waishi,” in Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 58, no. 2 (December 1998); and “Prisoner and Creator: The Self-image of the Poet in Han Yu (768-824) and Meng Jiao (751-814),” in Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 16 (1994). Currently, Professor Shang is working on a new book project, “Jin Ping Mei Cihua and Commercial Publicity: Narrative Construction of the Everyday World in Late Imperial China.”  He is also a contributor to The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature.

Professor Shang received his BA (1982) and MA (1984) from Peking University , and his PhD(1994) from Harvard. He joined the Columbia faculty in 1997 and became associate professor in 2002.

Email: ws110@columbia.edu