Research Area:
Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature, Comparative Literary Theory, Chinese Intellectuals and Artists in the Mid-20th Century

Prof. David Wang obtained his BA in Foreign Languages and Literature from National Taiwan University in 1976, and his MA and PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1978 and 1982 respectively. He taught at National Taiwan University (1982-1986) and Columbia University (1990-2004). He first joined Harvard University in 1986, serving as an Assistant Professor of Chinese for four years. He rejoined the Harvard faculty in 2004, when he was named Edward C. Henderson Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures. Currently he holds a joint appointment in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and the Department of Comparative Literature, and is also the Director of Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation Inter-University Center for Sinology based at Harvard.

Prof. Wang’s research interests include modern and contemporary Chinese literature, late Qing fiction and drama; comparative literary theory; colonial and modern Taiwanese fiction, and Asian American and diasporic literature; plus Chinese intellectuals and artists in the mid-20th century. His recent publications include Taiwan under Japanese Colonial Rule, 1895-1945: History, Culture, Memory (co-edited with Ping-hui Liao, 2007), Global Chinese Literature: Critical Essays (Chinese Overseas: History, Literature, and Society) (co-edited with Jing Tsu, 2010), The Lyrical in Epic Time: Modern Chinese Intellectuals and Artists Through the 1949 Crisis (2014) and A New Literary History of Modern China (2015).

Prof. Wang was elected Academician of Academia Sinica in 2004 and awarded the Changjiang Scholar Award in 2008. In 2020, he was elected a Member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.