Welcome!
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Notre Dame. I earned my Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Cultures from the University of Oregon in 2018. My research and teaching focus on the Chinese language, modern Chinese literature, film, popular culture, gender, and memory studies. My first book, Gendered Memories: An Imaginary Museum for Ding Ling and Chinese Female Revolutionary Martyrs, University of Michigan Press, 2025, explores the intersection of female martyrdom, national memory, and gender politics in modern Chinese history. I am working on a second book project, tentatively titled Producing Socialist China: The Aestheticization of Labor in Chinese Art and Literature (1949–1976).
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- My forthcoming book project, Gendered Memories: An Imaginary Museum for Ding Ling and Chinese Female Revolutionary Martyrs (University of Michigan Press, Spring 2025), explores the intersection of female martyrdom, national memory, and gender politics in modern Chinese history, centered around the lives and narratives of iconic revolutionary female figures, presented through the concept of an imaginary museum.
- I am also conducting research on a second book project tentatively titled Producing Socialist China: The Aestheticization of Labor in Chinese Art and Literature (1949-1976). The project examines the representations of “labor” and “production” in Chinese art and literature in the socialist era, 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.
- My third research project on “Propaganda and Counterpropaganda in Popular Culture” is in the beginning stage. When I was conducting research on representations of female revolutionary martyrs, I was drawn to the issues of digital activism, media censorship, and the popular trend of everyday consumers and artists rewriting socialist history and mocking socialist heroes in contemporary China. In my major future project, I plan to pursue this inquiry into contemporary Chinese literature, film and social media, with special focus on the tension between grassroots discourse and official discourse in popular culture.
- My research articles have appeared in Modern China, Comparative Literature Studies, Ming Studies, Chinese Oral and Performing Literature, and Modern Fiction Studies. I am the author of the book Creativity in China (2007) which addresses media, art and fashion industries in China.
Xian Wang, Ph.D. 