Modern Chinese literature and culture; critical translation theory; postcolonial theory; new empire studies; material culture, semiotics, and new media
Professor Liu’s research has focused on cross-cultural exchange in global history; the movement of words, theories, and artifacts across national boundaries; and the evolution of writing, textuality, and technology. She was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship; a Fellow of the National Humanities Center and a Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin; in 2013, she was the Class of 1932 Fellow in the Humanities Council at Princeton University.
Professor Liu received her PhD from Harvard University. Before joining Columbia in 2006, she was the Helmut F. Stern Professor in Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan (2002-2006) and the Catherine and William L. Magistretti Distinguished Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California-Berkeley (1990-2002). In 2015, she was appointed director of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society.
