Christopher Lupke, BA, MA, PhD

Area of Study / Keywords

Chinese Taiwan Cultural Studies postcoloniality Sinophone Poetry Cinema Translation filiality

About

• BA, Grinnell College (Philosophy), 1982
• MA, University of Wisconsin, Madison (Chinese), 1984
• PhD, Cornell University (East Asian Literature), 1993

Christopher Lupke’s research interests lie in modern and contemporary Chinese literature, cinema, and culture. He began his study of Chinese in the late 1970s at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, pursued language study and research at National Taiwan University in the 1980s, and has lived in Hong Kong, Taipei, and Beijing. He was classically trained in Chinese at the University of Wisconsin under Tse-tsung Chow, Joseph Lau, and Robert Joe Cutter, and then further trained at Cornell in classical studies under Tsu-Lin Mei, modern studies under Edward Gunn, and in cultural theory under Daniel Schwarz, Jonathan Culler, Dominick LaCapra, Benedict Anderson, Biodun Jeyifo, Sander Gilman, Mary Jacobus, and many of the leading luminaries in literary and film theory.

In his early years post-Ph. D., Lupke wrote a series of essays that interrogated the ideology of national consciousness in Chinese/Taiwanese literature and film as well as the interplay between philosophical and social values and literary expression. His work reflects a long-term fascination with the decoding of intricate texts. This fascination resulted in two edited volumes: The Magnitude of Ming: Command, Allotment, and Fate in Chinese Culture (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2005) and New Perspectives on Contemporary Chinese Poetry (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) and several guest-edited journal issues (Asian Cinema; positions: asia critique; JMLC; Rocky Mountain Review; and others). Lupke has built upon his work on contemporary poetry by co-editing two more volumes of scholarship on the topic, Chinese Poetic Modernisms, with Paul Manfredi, and Dictionary of Literary Biography: Chinese Poets since 1949, with Thomas Moran. Lupke's extensive editorial contributions have led to him receiving the Michael Delahoyde Award for Excellence in Editing from Rocky Mountain MLA. His combined interest in Taiwan and cinema studies reached fruition in the publication of The Sinophone Cinema of Hou Hsiao-hsien: Culture, Voice, Style, and Motion (Cambria Press, 2016), a comprehensive study of Taiwan’s leading auteur filmmaker and doyen of New Taiwan Cinema.  His articles can be found in boundary 2, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, The Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese, Asian Cinema, Journal of Asian Studies, Comparative Literature Studies, Chinese Literature Today, and elsewhere.

Having garnered over $800,000 in extramural grant funding in his career, Lupke has four times been named a Fulbright Scholar, most recently as Canada Fulbright Research Chair at the University of Calgary. He previously received two grants from the US Department of Education Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language Program as well as a Luce Foundation Fellowship, three Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation Awards, and two NEH Summer Stipends.

Lupke is an award-winning translator of Chinese literature and literary scholarship. He regards translation as one of the most important contributions a scholar of Chinese can make to the profession and to the study of Chinese literature and culture. His translations of poems, short stories, prose works, critical essays, and interviews, as well as a novel and a history of Chinese literature from Taiwan number over fifty and have appeared in Chinese PEN, Taiwan Literature, Chinese Literature Today, New England Review, Michigan Quarterly, Asymptote, Five Points, Free Verse, Epiphany, Eleven Eleven, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, and other venues. He has held a Residency Fellowship in translation at the Vermont Studio Center.

Christopher Lupke’s current book project examines the representation of filiality or filial piety in modern and contemporary Chinese literature and film. He also devotes much time to the translation of the poetry of Xiao Kaiyu and others. He welcomes the opportunity to supervise graduate students focusing on the modern field in general and in particular students interested in the following subjects: the relationship between philosophy, literature, and cinema; Sinophone literature and postcoloniality; translation and translation theory; and contemporary poetry.

Representative Publications:

Books:

Lupke, Christopher and Thomas Moran, eds. 2021. Dictionary of Literary Biography: Chinese Poets since 1949. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale/Columbia, SC: Bruccoli Clark Layman, Inc.

Ye Shitao. Christopher Lupke, Translator. 2020. A History of Taiwan Literature. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press. Winner of the biennial Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for the translation of a scholarly book on literature from the Modern Language Association (2022).

Seigneurie, Ken (lead), Wiebke Denecke, Christine Chism, Illaria L. E. Ramelli, Christopher Lupke, Evan Nicoll-Johnson, Frieda Ekotto, Abigail Celis, and B. Venkat Mani, eds. 2020. A Companion to World Literature. (6 Vols.). Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell Press.

Manfredi, Paul and Christopher Lupke, eds. 2019. Chinese Poetic Modernisms. Leiden and Boston: Brill Press.

Lupke, Christopher. 2016. The Sinophone Cinema of Hou Hsiao-hsien: Culture, Style, Voice, and Motion. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press.

Lupke, Christopher, ed. 2008. New Perspectives on Contemporary Chinese Poetry. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Lupke, Christopher, ed. 2005. The Magnitude of Ming: Command, Allotment, and Fate in Chinese Culture. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.

Selected Articles, Book Chapters, and Scholarly Entries:

Lupke, Christopher. 2021. "Getting to the Heart of the Matter: Sōseki's Excursion into the Split Subject and Translation's Rescue of the Humanities." Rocky Mountain Review 75.1 (Spring): 70-94.

Lupke, Christopher. 2021. "Xiao Kaiyu." In Christopher Lupke and Thomas Moran, eds., Dictionary of Literary Biography: Chinese Poets since 1949. Columbia, SC: Bruccoli Clark Layman, Inc. / Detroit: Gale Cencage, 208-217.

Lupke, Christopher. 2019. “National Myth and Global Aesthetics: Reading Yeats alongside Chinese Poetic Modernism.” In Paul Manfredi and Christopher Lupke, eds., Chinese Poetic Modernisms. Leiden and Boston: Brill Press, 209-334.

Lupke, Christopher. 2016. “Modernism and Nativism in Taiwan.” In David Der-Wei Wang, ed. A New History of Modern China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 669-674.

Lupke, Christopher. 2016. “Cold War Fiction from Taiwan and the Modernists.” In Kirk Denton, ed. The Columbia Companion to Modern Chinese Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 250-257.

Lupke, Christopher. 2016. “Nativism and Localism in Taiwanese Literature.” In Kirk Denton, ed. The Columbia Companion to Modern Chinese Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 258-266.

Lupke, Christopher. 2016. “Chinese Literature.” Blackwell Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies. Blackwell Publishers. (Seven Pages.)

Lupke, Christopher. 2013. “The Development of a Taiwanese Poet in the Diaspora: Yang Mu’s Prose Peregrinations Abroad.” Journal of Taiwan Literary Studies 16 (May): 251-281.

Lupke, Christopher. 2013. “Huang Chunming.” In Thomas Moran and Ye (Dianna) Xu, eds. Dictionary of Literary Biography: Chinese Fiction Writers, 1950-2000. Columbia, SC: Bruccoli Clark Layman, Inc. / Detroit: Gale Cencage, 100-110.

Lupke, Christopher. 2013. "Chen Yingzhen." In Thomas Moran and Ye (Dianna) Xu, eds. Dictionary of Literary Biography: Chinese Fiction Writers, 1950-2000. Columbia, SC: Bruccoli Clark Layman, Inc. / Detroit: Gale Cencage, 36-46.

Lupke, Christopher. 2012. “The Capillaries of Power: Hierarchy and Servitude in The Story of the Stone.” In Andrew Schonebaum and Tina Lu, eds., Approaches to Teaching Story of the Stone. New York: MLA Press, 283-295.

Lupke, Christopher. 2012. “Documenting Environmental Protest: Taiwan’s Gongliao Fourth Nuclear Power Plant and the Cultural Politics of Dialogic Artifice.” In Sylvia Li-chun Lin and Tze-Lan D. Sang, eds. Documenting Taiwan on Film: Issues and Methods in New Documentaries. New York: Routledge Press, 274-292.

Lupke, Christopher. 2008. “Zheng Chouyu and the Search for Voice in Contemporary Chinese Poetry.” In Christopher Lupke, ed. New Approaches to Contemporary Chinese Poetry. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 29-46.

Lupke, Christopher. 2007. “Liu E.” In Thomas Moran, ed., Dictionary of Literary Biography: Chinese Fiction Writers, 1900-1949. Columbia, SC: Bruccoli Clark Layman, Inc. / Detroit: Gale Cencage, 104-115.

Lupke, Christopher. 2005. “Divi/Nation: Modern Literary Representations of the Chinese Imagined Community.” In Christopher Lupke, ed. The Magnitude of Ming: Command, Allotment, and Fate in Chinese Culture. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 291-330.

Lupke, Christopher. 2000. “Xia Ji’an’s (T. A. Hsia) Critical Bridge to Modernism in Taiwan.” The Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 4.1 (July): 35-63.

Lupke, Christopher. 1998. “Wang Wenxing and The ‘Loss’ of China.” boundary 2 25.3: 97-128. Rpt. in Rey Chow, ed. Modern Chinese Literary and Cultural Studies in the Age of Theory. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000: 127-158.

Lupke, Christopher. 1992. “(En)gendering the Nation in Bai Xianyong’s ‘Wandering in the Garden, Waking from a Dream’.” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 6.1 and 2: 157-177.

Major Professional Service:

MLA LLC East Asian Forum Executive Committee, 2022-2026.

Association of Departments of Foreign Languages (ADFL) Executive Committee (2019-2021).

President, Association of Chinese and Comparative Literature, 2010-2013.

President, Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association, 2017-2018 (Vice Pres. 2016-2017).

Book Review Editor, Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR), 2019-present.

Founding Chair, MLA Modern Chinese Literature and Culture Forum, 2016-2018.

Delegate to the MLA Delegate Assembly (three terms).

MLA Elections Committee, 2014-2016 (Chair, 2015-2016).

MLA First Book Prize Selection Committee, 2021-2023.

MLA Post-1900 East Asian Literature Division Executive Committee, 2002-2006.

External Tenure and Promotion Reviews (Over three dozen).

Editorial Boards:

positions: asia critique; Taiwanlit; PMLA; CLT: Chinese Literature Today; Cambria Press Sinophone Studies Series; Rocky Mountain Review; Pacific Coast Philology, Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR).

Peer Reviews:

Social Science Research Council, Fulbright Foundation, National Security Education Program, National Humanities Center, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Columbia University Press, McGill-Queens University Press, Baylor University Press, Routledge Press, Brill Press, McGraw Hill, University of Michigan Press, Verlag Harrassowitz, Yale University Press, University of Washington Press, University of Hawai‘i Press, University of California Press, UC Berkeley Center for East Asian Studies Publications, Cambria Press, University of Oklahoma Press, Heinle Press, PMLA, MCLC, JMLC, Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, positions: asia critique, Frontiers, Studia Orientalia Slovakia, Philosophy East and West, The China Review.

EASIA 238 - Confucianism and Chinese Civilization

Classical Chinese Confucian thought and its influence on the later history and culture of China.

EASIA 598 - Topics in East Asian Research

An inquiry into the diversity of disciplines used in the study of East Asian literatures and cultures. Prerequisite: Consent of Department.

EASIA 599 - Directed Reading in East Asian Studies

May be repeated for credit when course content differs. Prerequisite: Consent of Department.

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