Prof. Dr. Zhiyi Yang

Office: Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaften (SKW), 5th floor room 05.B110
Phone: +49 (0)69/798-23288
Email: z.yang(at)em.uni-frankfurt.de
Consultation hours: Mondays, 14:00–16:00 p.m.
Key research areas
Premodern Chinese poetry and modern Chinese classicist poetry; aesthetics; memory studies; China’s wartime collaboration in WWII; classicist Sinophone cultures
Curriculum Vitae
EMPLOYMENT
Since 2025 - University Professor (W3)
Department of Sinology, 51猎奇 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
2015-2025 - University Professor (W2)
Department of Sinology, 51猎奇 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
2012-2015 - Junior Professor (W1)
Department of Sinology, 51猎奇 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
EDUCATION
2006-2012 - Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
Department of East Asian Studies
Ph.D. Candidate, Chinese Pre-modern Literature
2002-2005 - Peking University, Beijing, China
Institute of Comparative Literature
Master of Arts, Comparative Poetics
1998-2002 - Peking University, Beijing, China
Department of Chinese Language and Literature
Bachelor of Arts. Experimental Class of Liberal Arts
FELLOWSHIPS
- Guest Professorship, National Taiwan Normal University, December 2022–January 2023
- Goethe Fellow, Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften (Bad Homburg), April 2021–March 2025
- Residential Fellow, DFG Center for Advanced Studies “Russian-language Poetry in Transition: Poetic Forms of Dealing with the Limits of the Genre, Language, Culture and Society between Europe, Asia and America” (DFG FOR 2603, Trier University), October 2020–February 2021
- Residential Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies (Wissenschaftskolleg) at Berlin, September 2019–June 2020
- Guest Associate Professorship at the National Taiwan Normal University, November 2018–January 2019 (funded by the Ministry of Science, Taiwan)
- Residential Fellow, International Center for the Studies of Chinese Civilization, Fudan University, 2012
- Dissertation Writing Grant, Princeton University, Fall 2011
- Whiting Fellowship, Princeton University, 2010–2011 (highest honor for humanities students; one of eight recipients)
- Full Graduate Fellowship, Princeton University, 2006–2011
AWARDS, GRANTS, HONORS
- DFG Graduate College, "Aesthetics of Democracy," Principle Investigator, ongoing application
- DFG Forschunggruppe Rahmenantrag Initiative (FOR 5946/0) „Praktiken der Aktualisierung: Lektüre, Adaption, Übersetzung,“ submitted in 2024 and under review
- DFG Conference Grant (YA593/3-1) for the international workshop "Global Sinophone Classicisms: Hybridity, Agency, and Critical Challenges," Bad Homburg, 2024
- Hanban Conference Grant for the International Symposium, “Back into Modernity: Classical Poetry and Intellectual Transition in Modern China,” Frankfurt, 2014
- PIIRS Grant Summer Funding for Language Studies and Research, 2006, 2007, 2009
- Guanghua Scholarship, Peking University, 2000, 2001, 2002
- Honor for Outstanding Students, Peking University, 2001
- Chuying Scholarship, Peking University, 1998, 1999
Current projects
- Poetry, Memory, History: Wang Jingwei and China’s Wartime Collaboration.
Manuscript in submission. - The Lyric Angelus Novus: Avant-garde Classicist Poetry in the Chinese Cyberspace
- Sinophone Classicism
Publications and events
ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS
MONOGRAPHS
- 詩歌·歷史·記憶:汪精衛與中國的黑暗時代. Taipei: Linking Publisher 聯經出版社, July 2024. (Chinese version of Poetry, History, Memory)
- Poetry, History, Memory: Wang Jingwei and China in Dark Times. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, November 2023. []
- “自然”之辯:蘇軾的有限與不朽. Beijing: Sanlian chubanshe 三聯出版社, October 2018. [Chinese version of Dialectics of Spontaneity; forthcoming republication 2025]
- Dialectics of Spontaneity: The Aesthetics and Ethics of Su Shi (1037–1101). Leiden: Brill, July 2015. []
EDITED VOLUMES
- Guest Editor (with David Der-wei Wang). Special Issue “Classicism in Digital Times: Cultural Remembrance as Reimagination in the Sinophone Cyberspace,” Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature, 20.2 (2023): 341-66.
- Guest Editor (with Jeremy E. Taylor). Special Issue “Elite Accommodation, Collaboration and Cultural Production in Japanese-Occupied China,” European Journal of East Asian Studies2 (December 2020). []
- Guest Editor. Special Double Issue “Multivalent Lyric Classicism,” Frontiers of Literary Studies in China, 12.3 (October 2018).
- Guest Editor. Special Double Issue “Multivalent Lyric Classicism,” Frontiers of Literary Studies in China, 12.2 (July 2018).
- Guest Editor. Special Issue “Back into Modernity,” Frontiers of Literary Studies in China4 (December 2015).
PEER-REVIEWED JOURNAL ARTICLES
- “The Chairman’s Voice: Manuscript, Orality, and Revolutionary Classicism in Maoist China,” PMLA (forthcoming 05.2025).
- “Writing in the Digital Sand: Technology and Classicist Poetry in the Chinese Cyberspace,” Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature, 20.2 (September 2023, forthcoming).
- “Sinophone Classicism: Chineseness as Temporal and Mnemonic Experience in the Digital Era,” The Journal of Asian Studies4 (2022): 1–15.
- “An Alternative Lyric Modernity? Modern Classicism and Zhou Zuoren’s Wartime Doggerels,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 142.2 (2022): 335–52.
- “The Memory of an Assassin and Problems of Legitimacy in the Wang Jingwei Regime (1940–1945),” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies1 (2020): 37–83.
- “The Everyday Life under the Occupation: Doggerels in the Bitter Tea Studio as Texts of Liminality” 淪陷的日常:作為閾限文本的〈苦茶庵打油詩〉, Modern Chinese Literature 中國現代文學, 38 (Dec. 2020): 93–118.
- “Thatched Cottage in a Fallen City: The Poetics and Sociology of Survival under the Occupation,” European Journal of East Asian Studies2 (2020): 209–236.
- “Site: The Impossibility of Remembering the Past at Nanjing,” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture (MCLC) 32.1 (2020): 233–278.
- & Dayong Ma. “Classicism 2.0: The Vitality of Classicist Poetry Online in Contemporary China,” Frontiers of Literary Studies in China (FLSC) 12.3 (2018): 526–557.
- “The Tower of Going Astray: The Paradox of Liu Yazi’s (1887–1958) Lyric Classicism,” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture (MCLC) 28.1 (2016): 174–221.
- “The Modernity of the Ancient-Style Verse,” Frontiers of Literary Studies in China (FLSC) 9.4 (2015): 551–580.
- “The Road to Lyric Martyrdom: Reading the Poetry of Wang Zhaoming (1883–1944),” Chinese Literature: Essay, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR) 37 (2015): 135–164.
- “Return to an Inner Utopia: Su Shi’s Transformation of Tao Qian in His Exile Poetry,” T’oung-Pao 99 (2013): 329–378.
- “Classical Poetry in Modern Politics: Liu Yazi’s PR Campaign for Mao Zedong,” Asian and African Studies2 (2013): 208–226.
- “Zhu Xi as Poet,” Journal of the American Oriental Society4 (2012), 587–611.
NON-PEER-REVIEWED JOURNAL ARTICLES
- & David Der-wei Wang. “Introduction,” in Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature, 20.2 (September 2023, forthcoming).
- “‘Reading into the Night in the Double-Shining Tower’: Poetry on the Moon in Wang Zhaoming’s Final Years” 「雙照樓中夜讀書」:汪兆銘晚年的詠月詩, Republican China Literature and Culture Studies 民國文學與文化研究集刊 8 (2020): 139–154.
- & Jeremy E. Taylor. “Introduction: Toward a New History of Elite Cultural Expression in Japanese-occupied China,” European Journal of East Asian Studies2 (2020): 189–207.
- “A Humanist in Wartime France: Wang Jingwei during the First World War,” Poetica1–2 (2019): 163–192.
- “ The Making of a Master Narrative and How to Break It: Introduction to the Double Special Issue ‘Multivalent Lyric Classicism’,” Frontiers of Literary Studies in China (FLSC) 12.2 (2018): 153–181.
- “Milou: Liu Yazi yu Nanshe wenxue gudian zhuyi de beilun” 迷樓:柳亞子與南社古典主義的悖論, trans. Zhao Fan 趙凡, Jianghan xueshu 江漢學術2 (2018): 99–113.
- “Introduction to the Special Issue on Modern Chinese Lyric Classicism,” Frontiers of Literary Studies in China (FLSC) 9.4 (2015): 510–514.
- “Frankfurt Consensus,” Foreword to Frontiers of Literary Studies in China (FLSC) 9.4 (2015): 507-509.
- “Buddhist Temples and Peony Flowers” 佛寺與牡丹, Yiheng 藝衡 3 (2010), Beijing: Zhongguo wenlian Press.
- “The Book of Odes in 18th Century Britain” 《詩經》在十八世紀的英國, Multi-Cultural Studies 多邊文化研究 3 (2005): 451–467.
BOOK CHAPTERS
- Yang, Zhiyi. 2025. “To ‘World Poetry’ and Back: Xutang’s Classicist Lyricism and the Ethnic Digital Bookshelf.” In Lyrical Experiments in Sinophone Verse: Time, Space, Bodies, and Things, edited by Justyna Jagu?cik, Joanna Krenz, and Andrea Riemenschnitter, 169–88. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
- “Genosse Whitman: Der Barde Der Demokratie Unter Chinesischen Linken,” Horizonte Der Demokratie: Offene Lebensformen Nach Walt Whitman, pp. 67–86. Eds. Till van Rahden and Johannes Völz. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2024.
- “Voices from the In-Between: Chinese Internet Avant-Garde Classicist Poetry at the Crossroad,” The Bloomsbury Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature in Translation, pp. 77–90. Eds. Cosima Bruno, Lucas Klein, and Chris Song. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023.
- “Breaking the Void: Buddhism and Existentialism in Xutang’s Classicist Poetry,” Lyrik und Existenz in der Gegenwart, pp. 197–210. Eds. Angelika Schmitt and Henrieke Stahl. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2023.
- “Nationalism, Human-Co-Existentialism, Pan-Asianism: on Wang Jingwei’s Intellectual Transformation,” Discourses of Weakness in Modern China: Historical Diagnoses of the ‘Sick Man of East Asia, pp. 489–518. Ed. Iwo Amelung. Frankfurt: Campus, 2020.
- “Xin Qiji (1140–1207): Patriotism and Its Discontent,” Wiley-Blackwell Companion to World Literature, New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell, 2019. [Online Access]
- “Liusha shang de qilou: Liu Yazi yu Nanshe de wenxue minzu zhuyi” 流沙上的綺樓:柳亞子與南社的文學民族主義, in From Tradition to Modernity: Poetic Transition from 18th to Early 20th Century China 從傳統到現代的中國詩學, pp. 481–96. Eds. Tsung-cheng Lin 林宗正 & Zhang Bowei 張伯偉. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2017.
- “‘Classical Poetry Is My Opium,’ or How Liu Yazi (1887–1958) Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Vernacular Literature,” Le Comparatisme comme approche critique, Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2017.
- “Su Shi (1037–1101),” Berkshire Dictionary of Chinese Biography, Berkshire Publishing, 2014.
CONFERENCE ORGANIZATION
- 10-11/05/2024 Co-organizer (with David Der-wei Wang) of the workshop “Global Sinophone Classicisms: Hybridity, Agency, and Critical Challenges,” Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften, Bad Homburg, Germany
- 26-27/01/2023 Co-organizer with Nathan Taylor (Frankfurt) and Rebecca Kosick (Bristol), Workshop "Multiverses: Contemporary Poetry beyond the Lyric," Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, Bad Homburg, Germany
- 11/06/2022 Co-organizer (with David Der-wei Wang) of the Harvard-Frankfurt-Lingnan Symposium “Classicism in Digital Times: Textual Production as Cultural Remembrance in the Sinophone Cyberspace” (online)
- 16/09/2019 Co-organizer (with Jeremy Taylor) of the Workshop, “Cultural and Intellectual Histories of Japanese-Occupied China,” Asia House, London, UK
- 4–5/07/2014 Organizer of the Symposium, “Back into Modernity: Classical Poetry and Intellectual Transition in China, Late 19th through 20th Century,” 51猎奇 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
- 28–29/09/2012 Organizer of the Workshop, “Forgotten Renaissances,” Fudan University, Shanghai, China