USC College Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures

Xiaobing Tang

Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures and Comparative Literature

Contact Information
Office: THH 356G
Phone: (213)740-6647
E-mail: xiaobing.tang@usc.edu

LINKS
Personal Website

Education

Ph.D. Literature, Duke University, 5/1991

Academic Appointment, Affiliation, and Employment History

Tenure Track Appointments

Professor in modern Chinese literature and comparative literature, University of Southern California, 8/2005-
Associate professor in modern Chinese literature, University of Chicago, 9/1/1995-12/31/2005
Assistant professor in modern Chinese literature, University of Colorado, Boulder, 8/1991-8/1995

Visiting and Temporary Appointments

Visiting professor in Chinese Department, Fudan University, Shanghai, China, 5/2007-6/2007

Description of Research

Summary Statement of Research Interests

Xiaobing Tang teaches and conducts research in twentieth-century Chinese literature, art, intellectual history, public and popular culture. He has published broadly in both English and Chinese. His books include "Global Space and the Nationalist Discourse of Modernity: The Historical Thinking of Liang Qichao" (Stanford University Press, 1996), "Chinese Modern: The Heroic and the Quotidian" (Duke University Press, 2000), and "Origins of the Chinese Avant-garde: The Modern Woodcut Movement" (University of California Press, 2008). He has also co-edited two volumes titled "Politics, Ideology, and Literary Discourse in Modern China" (Duke University Press, 1993) and "In Pursuit of Contemporary East Asian Culture" (Westview Press, 1996) respectively. His essays on Chinese cinema, modern poetics and art, contemporary literature and culture have appeared in recent years in "positions: east asia cultures critique," "Modern China," "Public Culture," "boundary 2" and edited volumes. Xiaobing Tang's publications in Chinese include an edited volume on the historic public literature and art movement, a collection of essays, and a translation of Fredric Jameson's lectures in China in 1985.

Research Specialties

modern and contemporary Chinese literature and visual culture, theories of the avant-garde, modernism, and postmodernism

Detailed Statement of Research Interests

My research and academic writings have been focused on many aspects of the long twentieth century in China. Trained as a literary scholar, I began my engagement with modern Chinese literature and art, intellectual history, and cultural history with a monograph on Liang Qichao (1996), a prominent and influential essayist and historian at the turn of the last century. My second book, "Chinese Modern" (2000), is a collection of essays in which I read cultural texts (literary, visual, dramatic, and cinematic) from across the twentieth century. While the first book takes up some large conceptual issues about modernity and nationalism through a systematic examination of Liang Qichao's writings, the second book presents "intimate readings" that draw on many theoretical approaches and resources. Modernism and modernity have always been central to my intellectual inquiries. Working on "Chinese Modern" also revived my youthful passion for visual arts. On seeing a perfect visual emblem for that book in a woodblock print by Li Hua, I decided to undertake a study of the modern woodcut movement in China, with which I have always been fascinated. The result is my new book "Origins of the Chinese Avant-Garde" (University of California Press, 2008). In this book I trace the complex history of the woodcut movement and reconstruct the aesthetic, intellectual, and social appeal of the black-and-white woodblock print during the 1920s and 30s. I argue that the woodcut movement was the most consequential avant-garde and profoundly redefined the production of visual culture in modern China. What it ushered in is a new representational language as well as a radical conception of the artist. I am currently working on a number of essays to examine further, for instance, the experience of sound in literature and visual arts, the image and motif of the mother in modern woodblock prints, and the notion of a "socialist visual experience."

Conferences and Other Presentations

Conference Presentations

"Woodblock Prints that Scream: On the Origin of the Modern Chinese Woodcut Movement", Floating Avant-Garde: Zhonghua Duli Meishu Xiehui (1935) and Modern Art in Guangzhou, Shanghai, and , international conference, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China, Guangdong Museum of Art, Invited, 12/23/2007-12/24/2007

Publications

Book

Tang, X. (2007). Origins of the Chinese Avant-garde: The Field of Art and the Modern Woodcut. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Origins of the Chinese Avant-garde: The Field of Art and the Modern Woodcut/University of California Press. ordering info
Tang, Xiaobing (Ed.). (2007). Zai jiedu: Dazhong wenyi yu yishi xingtai. Beijing: Peking University Press.

Journal Article

Tang, X. (2007). Buxi de zhenchan: Shilun ershi shiji shige de yige zhuti. Wenxue pinglun / Literary Review. Vol. 5 (September 2007), pp. 25-32.
Tang, X. (2006). Looking back at the Fascist Spectacle. Dushu/Joint Publishers. Vol. No. 331 (October 2006), pp. 42-50.
Tang, X. (2006). Echoes of Roar, China! On Vision and Voice in Modern Chinese Art. Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique/Duke University Press. Vol. 14 (2), pp. 467-494.
Tang, X. (2005). Nuhouba, Zhongguo de huisheng (Echoes of Roar, China). Dushu/Joint Publishers. Vol. No. 318 (September 2005), pp. 18-24.

New Courses Developed

Literary and Artistic Movements in Modern China, EALC, A graduate seminar designed to offer an in-depth survey of parallel movements in the twentieth century., 2007-2008

Honors and Awards

Mellon New Directions Fellowship, 7/2005-7/2008
American Council of Learned Societies workshop grant, 2/2007-5/2007

Service to the Profession

Committees

Member, Executive Committee of the Division on East Asian Languages and Literatures after 1900, Modern Language Association, 1/1/2008-12/31/2012

Professional Memberships

Modern Language Association, 2005-
Asscoiation for Asian Studies, 1992-