Xinmin Liu, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Chinese and Film Studies

Head of Section, Chinese

 

Biography

Xinmin Liu Ph.D is Associate Professor of Chinese and Comparative Cultures in the School of Languages, Cultures, and Race at the Washington State University. He received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Yale in 1997, and his teaching and research has since been chiefly cross-cultural and interdisciplinary, dealing with cultural geography, ethnography, ethics, and social thought. His published works include Signposts of Self-Realization: Evolution, Ethics and Sociality in Modern Chinese Literature and Film (monograph, 2004). Since 2005, he has focused intersected realms of cultural geography, landscape aesthetic and ecocriticism in China and the West and has edited a few special issues on ecocritical studies of art, literature and culture for journals such as Forum for World Literature Studies (China), Tamkang Review (Taiwan), and Communication and The Public (USA). In 2021, he published a collection of ecocritical essays named Embodied Memories, Embedded Healing: New Ecological Perspectives from East Asia (Lexington Books) which he co-edited with Peter I-min Huang. He is currently finishing another monograph entitled Dwelling in the Mire: Rekindling the Ecological Imaginary with China’s Agrarian Heritages. He is also co-editing a volume of critical essays named Rethinking the Human: Ecocriticism and Speculative Fiction in East Asia which is under contract with Palgrave and Macmillan Press.

 

Publications

Books

• Liu, Xinmin. Signposts of Self-Realization: Evolution, Ethics and Sociality in Modern Chinese Literature and Film (monograph). Leiden: Brill Academic Publishing, 2014.

Articles and Book Chapters

• Liu, Xinmin. “Greenwashing, Simulated Green and Beyond: Yi-fu Tuan and His Embodied Simulation of Habitats” in Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature, Vol. 21.1, Duke   University Press, March 2024, pp. 103-115.

• Liu, Xinmin. “Situating the ‘Science’ Craze in China: The Stillbirth of Simulated ‘Villas’ in Ordos 100” an essay in “Focus: Prometheus in China” in Made in China Journal, a quarterly published by the Australian National University Press, 2nd ed. Vol. 7, 2023, pp. 132-137.

• Liu, Xinmin. “Introduction” to co-edited volume of essays entitled Embodied Memories, Embedded Healing: New Ecological Perspectives from East Asia. Edits by Xinmin Liu and Peter I-min Huang, published by Lexington Books, November 2021, pp. 1-13.

• Liu, Xinmin. “Conclusion” to co-edited volume of essays entitled Embodied Memories, Embedded  Healing: New Ecological Perspectives from East Asia. Edits by Xinmin Liu and Peter I-min Huang, published by Lexington Books, November 2021, pp. 267-272.

• Liu, Xinmin. “Land, Technological Triumphalism and Planetary Limits: Revisiting human-land affinity,” a chapter for the volume, Chinese Environmental Humanities: Practices of  Environing at the Margins, edited by Chia-ju Chang, published byPalgrave MacMillanin2019, pp. 189-208.

• Liu, Xinmin. “Foreword by Guest-Editor: Placing the public(s) in revitalizing local and rural cultural heritages” to a special issue “Embodied and Embedded Connectivity: New Perspectives on Communication, the Public and Cultural Heritages” in     Communication and The Public, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishing, Vol. 3 No. 4, December 2018, pp. 265-269.

• Liu, Xinmin. “Hindsight as Foresight: Ecological Awareness in China’s ‘Search-for-Root’ Writings in 1980s,” in Critical Essays on Eco-cinema in China 中国生态电影文选, edits., Sheldon Lu & Haomin Gong.  Wuhan: Wuhan University Press, 2017, pp. 116-141.

• Liu, Xinmin. “Foreword by Guest-Editor” to a special issue: “Speculative Fiction and Planetary Healing,” in Tamkang Review, New Taipei City: Taiwan 25137, vol. 47, No. 2, June 2017, pp. iv-viii.

• Liu, Xinmin. “Defining Nature and its Ethical Redemption: The Early Roots of Eco-criticism in Existentialist Philosophies” 自然的界定和道德救赎：也谈生态批评与存在主义之渊源 a special issue for Siyi: Critical Stimulations from Drifting Minds. Cardiff, UK:  Loft.com, Issue 3, February 2016, pp. 98-128.

• Liu, Xinmin. “Preface” to a special English cluster named “Manufactured Landscapes Studies” edited by Xinmin Liu for the journal Forum for World Literature Studies, Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2014, for Shanghai Normal University, Central China Normal University, China and Purdue University, USA, pp. pp. 426-429.

• Liu, Xinmin. “Ethical Dilemma in ‘Documenting’ Manufactured Landscapes in China” included in the English special cluster published for the journal Forum for World Literature Studies, Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2014 by Shanghai Normal University, Central China Normal University, China and Purdue University, USA, pp. 468-485.

• Liu, Xinmin. “The Picturesque and ‘Interrelatedness’ in Perceiving Landscape: Chinese Garden Art in Industrialized England,” in Constructive Postmodernism and Eco-aesthetics (Book), Ed. David Griffin. Jinan: Shandong University Press, China, 2013, 342-351 “如画学说与认知 的‘间联性’—从中国庭园艺术的东学西渐谈起 (The Picturesque and “Inter-relatedness” in Perceiving Landscape—Viewed from the West-bound Journey of Chinese Garden Art.” 曾繁仁主编, 山东大学 2013 年出版, 第 352-357 页

• Liu, Xinmin. “Zhang Chengzhi” entry essay included in Modern Chinese Fiction Writers 1950-2000, Ed. Thomas Moran. Volume #369 of Dictionary of Literary Biography, Columbia, SC: Bruccoli Clark Layman, Inc., 2013, pp. 278-285.

• Liu, Xinmin. “Bai lian cheng gang: Steel Is Made through Persistent Tempering” in Words and Their Stories, Ed. Ban Wang. Leiden: Brill (The Netherlands) 2010, pp. 85-99.

• Liu, Xinmin. “In the Face of Developmental Ruins: Ethical Claims of China’s Ecocinema” in Ecocinema in China. Eds. Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu & Jiayan Mi. Hong Kong, China: Hong Kong University Press, 2009, pp. 217-233.

• Liu, Xinmin. “Spectacle of Remembrance: nostalgia in contemporary Chinese art” in China’s Literary and Cultural Scenes at the Turn of the 21st Century. Ed. Jie Lu. London: Routledge, 2008 (reprint), pp. 257-268.

• Liu, Xinmin. “Place Construction: Innovative Reworking of Fiction in Recent Chinese Films” in Journal of Contemporary China. London: UK: Francis and Taylor, 2008, November, pp. 699-716.

• Liu, Xinmin. “Ye Shaojun” in Modern Chinese Fiction Writers 1900-1949. Ed. Thomas Moran. A volume of Dictionary of Literary Biography. Columbia, SC: Bruccoli Clark Layman, Inc., 2007, pp. 272-281.

• Liu, Xinmin. “Border Pedagogy in American Schooling: Reflections on China Pedagogy in Cultural Studies” in a special issue ed. Ban Wang. Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, 31.2, July 2005 pp. 66-83.

• Liu, Xinmin. “Play and Being Playful: the Quotidian in Cinematic Remembrance of the Mao Era,” in Asian Cinema, Vol. 15 #1, Spring/Summer 2004, pp. 73-89.

• Liu, Xinmin. “Spectacles of Remembrance: Nostalgia in Contemporary Chinese Art” in a special issue ed. Lu Jie, Journal of Contemporary China. London: UK: Carfax Publishing, Vol. 13, Number 39, 2004, pp. 311-321.

• Liu, Xinmin. “Deciphering the Populist Gadfly: Cultural Polemics around Zhang Chengzhi’s ‘Religious Sublime’” in The Modern Chinese Literary Essay: Defining the Chinese Self in the 20th Century. Bochum, Germany: Bochum University Press, 2000, pp. 188-193.

• Liu, Xinmin. “Self-Making in Wilderness: Zhang Chengzhi’s Reinvention of Ethnic Identity” in American Journal of Chinese Studies. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, Vol. 5, Number 1, 1998, pp. 89-97.

• Liu, Xinmin. “A Marginal Return? The Case of Zhang Chengzhi’s Problematic Self-Reorientation” in The Journal of Contemporary China. UK: Carfax Publishing Ltd, Vol. 6, No.16, 1997, pp. 567-580.

• Liu, Xinmin. “The Education of Desire: Space, Sight and Self-Cultivation in Jin Ping Mei.” Tamkang Review (Taipei: Republic of China) Vol. 26, No. 3, spring, 1997, pp. 21-52.