Anna Shields, Princeton University

Professor Princeton, New Jersey ashields@Princeton.EDU Office: (609) 258-8365

Expert In

Classical Chinese literature Emotions in classical literature Literary history in China Sociology of literature

Bio/Research

Anna M. Shields, Professor of East Asian Studies, received her A.M. (1990) from Harvard University and her Ph.D. (1998) from Indiana University. She specializes in classical Chinese literature of the Tang, Five Dynasties, and Northern Song eras. Her particular interests include literary history and the emergence of new literary genres and styles in late medieval China; the sociology of literature; and the role of emotions in classical literature. Her first book, Crafting a Collection: The Cultural Contexts and Poetic Practice of the Collection from among the Flowers (Huajian ji), published by the Harvard Asia Center, examined the emergence of the song lyric in a path-breaking anthology. Her recent book, One Who Knows Me: Friendship and Literary Culture in Mid-Tang China, explores the literary performance of friendship in ninth-century China through a wide range of genres, including letters, prefaces, exchange poetry, and funerary texts. Other recent and forthcoming publications investigate emotions in medieval letters; the compilation of anthologies of Tang literature in the Northern Song; and the cultural influence of Tang dynasty anecdote collections. She has served as President of the T’ang Studies Society since 2011. She is a former editor of the East Asian section of the Journal of the American Oriental Society, and is also an editorial board member of the Library of Chinese Humanities Chinese-English translation series, published by De Gruyter. Before her appointment at Princeton, she taught at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where she served both as Director of the Honors College (2007-2011) and as associate professor in the Dept. of Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communications (2007-2015), and at the University of Arizona (1999-2006). She is currently working on a new book that traces the shaping of the Tang dynasty literary legacy during the Five Dynasties and Northern Song.

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