Huijun Mai
I am a scholar of medieval Chinese literature and cultural history (220–1300), specializing in classical poetry and poetics, lyric, and prose. My research explores the intersections of literary writing, material cultures, and everyday practices. My recent publications examine how medieval Chinese catalogs reveal writers’ conflicting sensibilities towards the empire and its values, how court poetry turns a man-made garden into god’s abode on earth, and most recently, how eleventh-century horticultural technology challenges the ethics of time. I’m currently completing my first monograph, entitled Poets in the Kitchen, which unravels the entanglement of culinary history, gustatory experience, and poetic culture in eleventh through thirteenth century China. I am dedicated to scholarly communications through research talks and public-facing lectures. The common thread throughout my research, teaching, and writing is my conviction that literature as humanistic inquiry—through attentive reading and creative writing—profoundly shapes our habits of knowing and ways of being in the world.
I am currently serving on the editorial board of Postmedieval (2024 – , please reach out to pitch ideas!) and Zhongguo shixue yanjiu nianjian 中國詩學研究年鑒 (Annals of Research in Chinese Poetry and Poetics) (2023 – ).
Education
Ph.D. Harvard University (East Asian Languages and Civilizations), 2020
M.A. Harvard University (Regional Studies — East Asia), 2014
B.A. Peking University, 2012
Publications
Research Articles
Mai, H. Gardening time: Horticulture and meditations on time in Song (960–1279) China. Postmedieval (2023).
Mai, H. The Technology of Enchantment: Agentive Texts and Religious Theatre at Huizong’s Court, Nanyang Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture (NJCLC), 4 (May 2023), 64–93.
Mai, H. The Double Life of the Scallop: Anthropomorphic Biography, Pulu and the Northern Song Discourse on Things, Journal of Song-Yuan Studies, vol.49 (2020), 149–205.
Mai, H. 如何歸去──談柳永的幾首羈旅行役詞 (On Liu Yong’s Travel Lyrics), Wenshi zhishi 文史知識, vol. 11, 2013.
Reviews
Mai, H. “Zhongguo shixue yanjiu baogao (Beimei)” 中國詩學研究报告(北美 ) (Annual Report of Classical Chinese Poetry and Poetics Studies in North America), in Zhongguo shixue yanjiu baogao 2022, Anhui: Anhui shifan daxue chubanshe, September 2023.
Mai, Huijun 麥慧君 and Lili Xia 夏麗麗, 北米における直近二十年の宋代文學研究についての評述（上) (近二十年來北美宋代文學研究評述 A Critical Survey of Song Dynasty Literary Research in North America, 2000—2024). Translated by 原田愛 , forthcoming in The Nippon Sōdai bungaku gakkaihō 日本宋代文學學會報, 2024.
Translations
Zhishi yishou ge: shiyi shiji zhi shi’er shiji zaoqi ci 只是一首歌: 十一世紀至十二世紀早期詞, co-translation (with Feiran Du & Chen Liu) of Stephen Owen, Just A Song: Chinese Lyrics from the Eleventh and Early Twelfth Century (Harvard University, 2019). Beijing: Sanlian chubanshe, 2022.
Podcasts
Interview on New Books Network with Timothy Brook, on Brook, The Price of Collapse: The Little Ice Age and the Fall of Ming Dynasty (Princeton University Press, 2023). Nov 3, 2023.
Interview on New Books Network with Thomas Kelly, on Kelly, The Inscription of Things: Writing and Materiality in Early Modern China (Columbia University Press, 2023).
Interview on New Books Network with Huan Jin, on Jin, The Collapse of Heaven: The Taiping Civil War and Chinese Literature and Culture, 1850-1880 (Harvard University Asia Center, 2024)
