Research Interests
I am currently finishing my book manuscript titled Licking the Eyes: Writing the Senses in Early Modern China. This book brings the lens of sensory studies to look at early modern Chinese literature and culture (1600–1800). Through case studies drawn from various literary genres including fiction, memoir, essays, and poetry, I demonstrate how writing about the senses—particularly the so-called “lower” senses of smell, taste, and touch— became an accessible and irreplaceable medium through which Chinese literati authors constructed their identities and negotiated their place in a rapidly changing early modern world. In exploring this rich corpus, I pay particular attention to the entangled relationship between sensing and writing, arguing for a mutually nourishing cycle between sensing and writing: on the one hand, the need to apprehend and document these various sensory experiences motivated the development of new literary writing paradigms; on the other hand, the ever-so rich genre selections prompted early modern Chinese authors to exert their creativity and better capture the phenomenal world for their readers and for their own understanding.