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Xiaofei Tian

Professor of Chinese Literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University

Harvard University

Areas of expertise

  • - Medieval Chinese Literature
  • - Manuscript culture
  • - Travel writings
  • - Relationship between Premodern and Modern Chinese literature

Major works

Tao Yuanming and Manuscript Culture. University of Washington Press, 2005.
Beacon Fire and Shooting Star: The Literary Culture of the Liang (502-557). Harvard University Asia Center, 2007.
Visionary Journeys: Travel Writings from Early Medieval and Nineteenth-century China. Harvard University Asia Center, 2011.

About me

Born in China in 1971, Xiaofei Tian graduated from Peking University in 1989 and obtained her PhD in Comparative Literature at Harvard in 1998. She is Professor of Chinese Literature and chair of Regional Studies East Asia program. Her translation of a nineteenth-century memoir, The World of a Tiny Insect: A Memoir of the Taiping Rebellion and Its Aftermath, was awarded the inaugural Patrick D. Hanan Prize by Association for Asian Studies in 2016. She was a Walter Channing Cabot Fellow in 2012. She has also published many Chinese-language books on Chinese and Western literatures, ranging from the 16th-century Chinese novel Jinpingmei to Sappho and the poetry of Moorish Spain.

Courses and Programs taught by Xiaofei Tian