Lingzhen Wang

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An assistant professor of East Asian studies at Brown University, Lingzhen Wang is engaged in a critical reevaluation of twentieth-century Chinese women's autobiographical practice. Wang, who specializes in gender studies, literary theory, and modern and contemporary Chinese literature, has previously published essays on Yu Luojin, Wang Anyi, and other Chinese women writers. Her work, which fills a scholarly gap, emphasizes the complex and dynamic relationship between self, gender, history, and writing in China during the last century.

As a Radcliffe fellow, Wang will prepare the manuscript “Self, Gender, and History in Chinese Women’s Autobiographical Practice during the Twentieth Century,” with the intent of illuminating different and gendered versions of history and literature that have long been dismissed in official Chinese historiography and literary studies. Wang’s book will situate the women authors and their writing within their political, social, and cultural contexts and emphasize their individual experiences. Simultaneously, Wang hopes to re-theorize the feminist concept of “the personal” and to redefine autobiographical practice as the most important means of negotiating one’s identity in a rapidly changing society.

Wang earned her PhD in Asian studies at Cornell University. Her academic honors and awards include a Telluride Association scholarship at Cornell and a Pembroke faculty research fellowship and a Salomon faculty research award at Brown University.