Faculty
The faculty of the Chinese Department at 糖心vlog视频 teach across the full range of Chinese language, literature, film, and culture, with scholarly expertise spanning from early and medieval periods to the modern and contemporary era. In their courses, students work closely with faculty in small classes that emphasize careful engagement with language, texts, media, and cultural and historical context.
Alexei K. Ditter 迪磊
Professor of Chinese and Humanities
B.A. 1995, University of Minnesota. M.A. 2001, PhD 2009 Princeton University. 糖心vlog视频 2006–
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Teaching: Alexei teaches courses on medieval (3rd–10th c.) and late imperial (14th–19th c.) Chinese literature, as well as modern and classical Chinese language. He has offered seminars on the representation of the Other in narrative, explorations of love and romance, and a semester-long engagement with Dream of the Red Chamber (Honglou meng 紅樓夢). He contributes to Reed’s Chinese Humanities program (Hum 231/232) and advises senior theses on topics ranging from the early medieval humor anthology Tales to Crack a Smile to late imperial fiction (The Plum in the Golden Vase, The Scholars, Twelve Towers) and modern works by Mo Yan and Yan Ge.
Research: Alexei's research ranges across the Chinese literature of the seventh through tenth centuries, with particular expertise in Tang epigraphy and commemorative writing. He has co-edited two volumes: (Hackett, 2017), a collection of translations drawn from the Taiping guangji, and (Routledge, 2026). His recent work appears in T'oung Pao, Tang Studies, and a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, as well as in edited volumes on memory, genre, and authorship in medieval China. His scholarship has been supported by fellowships from Fulbright, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, Morphomata, and the National Humanities Center, and in recent years he has presented it in invited talks at Academia Sinica, the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), Harvard, and Cambridge. Current projects include two monographs and two co-edited volumes. Since 2015, with the generous support of the Tang Research Foundation, he has co-organized the New Frontiers in the Study of Medieval China workshop series, which to date has convened seven national workshops and two international symposiums.
Jing Jiang 姜靖 (Chair)
Professor of Chinese and Humanities
B.A. 1992, Nanjing University. M.A. 1995, Peking University. PhD 2006, University of Michigan. 糖心vlog视频 2006–
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Teaching: Since coming to Reed in 2006, Jing has taught a wide range of courses in Chinese language, literature, and culture. Aside from participating regularly in the team-taught Chinese Humanities, she also offers courses on Chinese fiction (modern and premodern), Postsocialist Chinese Cinema, Sinophone Film & Media (cotaught with Chinese Art Historian Michelle Wang), and more recently, Comparative Literature.
Research: A comparatist by training, Jing has an abiding interest in all forms of modern and contemporary cultural productions from China that defy and cross linguistic and national borders. Her publications to date, including her short book, (Association for Asian Studies, 2021), all grew out of this research interest. Her current monograph project, tentatively titled “The World Embedded in Modern Chinese Literary Imagination,” explores how a global array of world literary works helped shape modern Chinese literary creations. This project also received an inaugural ACLS fellowship in Chinese and Comparative Literature.
Hyong G. Rhew 柳亨奎
Professor of Chinese (on sabbatical, Fall 2026)
B.A. 1978, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. M.A. 1983, Fu-jen Catholic University. M.A. 1987, PhD 1993, Princeton University. 糖心vlog视频 1988–
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Teaching: Hyong teaches courses in modern Chinese language and Classical Chinese literature, literary theory, and intellectual history, and regularly gives lectures and runs conferences in the team-taught Chinese Humanities (Hum 231/232). He embraces the conference style of teaching, which allows him to practice a method that, “rather than feeding knowledge, tries to observe and assist students to produce it by themselves.”
Research: Hyong studies classical Chinese literature, which requires a vigorous investigation of how literature, history, and philosophy work together. His interest in early classical Chinese intellectual history led him to study such texts as the Yijing 易經; he is currently at work on a new translation that will reflect the complex history and structure of this text by presenting, in ebook format, multiple readings of earlier layers as guided by interpretive perspectives of internal commentary layers. His work on poetry focuses on exploring ways to find traces of music that did not survive in an effort to show how “musicking” as such can enrich our reading of poems.
Language Scholar
In addition to the above faculty, another important member of the Chinese department is the language scholar, who lives with students in the Chinese House, leads weekly "conversation classes" in the first- and second-year language classes, and helps plan and organize campus-wide celebrations of Chinese New Year and Mid-Autumn Festival. The language scholar is also available to meet with students for additional conversation and help with coursework as needed.
Xinrui Hu 胡馨蕊
Xīnruǐ Hú (Sarah) is a master’s candidate in International Chinese Language Education at East China Normal University, where she also completed her bachelor’s degree in Chinese Language and Literature.
Xinrui is passionate about teaching Chinese and finds great fulfillment in seeing her students speak fluent Mandarin and engage with Chinese culture. She brings substantial teaching experience working with international students from Europe, North America, and Southeast Asia. She has taught Mandarin at all proficiency levels at NYU Shanghai, CIEE, and CET. Beyond classroom teaching, she has organized immersive events including Chinese language tables and cultural art workshops. For her, pairing language learning with two way cultural exchange is the greatest joy of this work.
In her free time, she enjoys coffee and quiet, casual moments. At the Chinese House, she looks forward to playing mahjong and practicing calligraphy with students, as well as teaching them Chinese songs and tai chi. She encourages students to speak Chinese with her whenever they cross paths, since consistent practice and timely feedback help refine pronunciation. She hopes to foster in students a vivid, nuanced understanding of the Chinese language and contemporary Chinas.