Jack W. Chen works on early and medieval Chinese literature and thought, with a focus on poetry, poetics, and anecdotal writings.  He is the author of The Poetics of Sovereignty: On Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty (2010) and Anecdote, Network, Gossip, Performance: Essays on the Shishuo xinyu (2021), as well as co-editor of Idle Talk: Gossip and Anecdote in Traditional China (2013) and Literary Information in China: A History (2021).  He has also published various articles and essays on the poet Du Fu, donkey-braying, and network visualization.  He was co-director of the SIF-funded Humanities Informatics Lab (Institute of the Humanities and Global Cultures; 2017–2020) and is broadly interested in lyric theory, computational approaches to literary analysis, information histories, questions of comparative and world methodology, and cats. His current project is a study of poems composed by ghosts in medieval China.

He is currently serving his second term as chair of the China and Inner Asia Council (CIAC), one of the four area councils that represent the membership of the Association of Asian Studies (AAS). He is also secretary of the Modern Language Association (MLA) Pre-14th Century Chinese Executive Forum.

PUBLICATIONS

2021

Chen JW. "Chapter 1: The Way of the Sovereign"; "Chapter 2: The Organization of Governance"; "Chapter 25: On Profligacy and Recklessness"; "Chapter 26: On Greed and Baseness". In: de Weerdt H, Dudbridge G, van Beijeren G. The Essentials of Governance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2021. p. 440.

Chen JW. "Lines, Couplets, Stanzas". In: Literary Information in China: A History. New York: Columbia University Press; 2021. pp. 119–24.

Chen JW. "Text and Textual Divisions". In: Literary Information in China: A History. New York: Columbia University Press; 2021. pp. 111–12.

Chen JW, Detwyler A, Liu X, Nugent CMB, Rusk B. "Introduction: For a History of Literary Information in China". In: Literary Information in China: A History. New York: Columbia University Press; 2021. p. xxi–xxxii.

Chen JW, Detwyler A, Liu X, Nugent CMB, Rusk B. Literary Information in China: A History. New York: Columbia University Press; 2021. p. 648.

Chen JW. Anecdote, Network, Gossip, Performance: Essays on the Shishuo xinyu. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center; 2021. p. 320.

2020

Chen JW. “Foundings of Home: On Du Fu and Poetic Success”. In: Tian X. Reading Du Fu: Nine Views. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press; 2020. pp. 15–26.

Chen JW, Allen SM. "Fictionality in Early and Medieval China". New Literary History. 2020;51(1):231–34.

2019

Chen JW, Broadwell P, Shepard D. “Reading the Quan Tang shi: Literary History, Topic Modeling, Divergence Measures”. Digital Humanities Quarterly. 2019;13(4).

2018

Chen JW. “On Mourning and Sincerity in the Li ji and the Shishuo xinyu”. In: Swartz W, Campany RF. Memory in Medieval China: Text, Ritual, and Community. Leiden: Brill; 2018. pp. 63–81.

Chen JW. “Du Fu: The Poet as Historian”. In: Cai Z-qi. How to Read Chinese Poetry in Context: Chinese Poetic Culture from Antiquity through the Tang. New York: Columbia University Press; 2018. pp. 236-47.

2017

Chen JW. "Sites I (Mapping the Spaces of Chinese Literature)". In: Denecke W, Tian X, Li W-yee. The Oxford Handbook of Classical Chinese Literature (1000 BCE–900 CE). New York: Oxford University Press; 2017. pp. 424–37.

2016

Chen JW. "闻驴鸣：中国中古时期的友谊、礼仪与社会常规" 卞东波. 暨南大學學報（廣州）. 2016;(2):11-17.

Chen JW, Barlow T, 方红, 周宪. 中国古代的王权、货币和亲属关系. In: 从外部世界看中国：positions 杂志20年精粹 . 南京: 南京大學出版社; 2016. pp. 28-45.

2014

Chen JW, Nicoll-Johnson E. "Early Medieval Poetry". Oxford Bibliographies in Chinese Studies. 2014.

Chen JW, Borovsky Z, Kawano Y, Chen R. “The Shishuo xinyu as Data Visualization”. Early Medieval China. 2014;20:22–58.

2013

Chen JW. “Knowing Men and Being Known: Gossip and Social Networks in the Shishuo xinyu”. In: Chen JW, Schaberg D. ldle Talk: Gossip and Anecdote in Traditional China. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Global, Area, and International Archive and University of California Press; 2013. pp. 55–70.

Chen JW. "Introduction". In: Chen JW, Schaberg D. ldle Talk: Gossip and Anecdote in Traditional China. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Global, Area, and International Archive and University of California Press; 2013. pp. 1–16.

Chen JW. “Sovereignty, Coinage, and Kinship in Early China”. positions: east asia critique. 2013;21(3):637–58.

Chen JW, Schaberg D. Idle Talk: Gossip and Anecdote in Traditional China. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Global, Area, and International Archive and University of California Press; 2013. p. 258.

2012

Chen JW. “Shi 詩”. In: Greene R. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 4th Edition. Princeton: Princeton University Press; 2012. pp. 1298–1302.

2011

Chen JW. “On Sui and Tang Cities: Introduction”. T'ang Studies. 2011;29:2-5.

“On Hearing the Donkey’s Bray: Friendship, Ritual, and Social Convention in Medieval China”. Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews. 2011;33:1–13.

Chen JW. “Social Networks, Court Factions, Ghosts, and Killer Snakes: Reading Anyi Ward”. T’ang Studies. 2011;29:46–61.

2010

Chen JW. “Blank Spaces and Secret Histories: Questions of Historiographic Epistemology in Medieval China”. Journal of Asian Studies. 2010;69(4):1071–91.

Chen JW. The Poetics of Sovereignty: On Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center; 2010. p. 468.

2009

Chen JW. "北美漢學研究現況 (Thoughts on the State of Chinese Literary Studies in North America)”. 漢學研究通訊. 2009;28(1):33-37.

Chen JW. “中國中古時期的閱讀實作與表現 (The Practice and Representation of Reading in Medieval China)”. In: 劉苑如 LY-ju. 遊 觀：作為身體技藝的中古文學與宗教 (Inner Landscape Visualized: Techniques of the Body in Medieval Chinese Literature and Religion). Taipei: Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica; 2009. pp. 132–56.

Chen JW. “On the Act and Representation of Reading in Medieval China”. Journal of the American Oriental Society. 2009;129(1):57– 71.

2005

Chen JW. “The Writing of Imperial Poetry in Medieval China”. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. 2005.

2004

Chen JW, Heller N. “Politics and Chinese Religion”. In: The Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd Revised Edition. New York: Macmillan; 2004. pp. 7266–70.