Research Area:
Literature, Classical Music, Film, and Architecture

Born in China, Prof. LEE Leo Ou-fan was brought up in Taiwan and went to the United States for graduate education where he received his PhD from Harvard University in 1970. Having taught at Harvard University, University of California, Los Angeles, The University of Chicago, Indiana University, and Princeton University, he took early retirement in 2004 in order to return to Hong Kong for a second career as both an academic and a cultural critic at large, writing in both Chinese and English.

His scholarly publications in English include: Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Form of Urban Culture, 1930-1945 (Harvard University Press, 1999), Voices from the Iron House: A Study of Lu Xun (Indiana University Press, 1987), The Romantic Generation of Modern Chinese Writers (Harvard, 1973).

While in the United States, he received a number of fellowships and prizes, including the Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2001, Prof. Lee was awarded a Doctor of Humanities honoris causa from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. In Hong Kong, he has been an active writer and promoter of the cause of humanities both inside and outside the academy with a steady string of more than two dozen essay collections in Chinese. The most recent and relevant is Renwen Jinzhao (人文今朝) (Humanities Today; Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2010). A special book written for Hong Kong with photos is called City between Worlds: My Hong Kong (Harvard University Press, 2008).