Jack W. Chen (Assistant Professor of Chinese Poetry and Thought) received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in Comparative Literature, his M.A. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and his B.A. from Yale University. He is broadly interested in the intellectual, historical, and comparative contexts of Chinese poetry from the Han through Northern Song periods. Prof. Chen is completing a monograph on the literary writings of Tang Taizong, which will examine the relationship between poetry and sovereignty in the medieval period. His next project is a collection of essays on the literary history of gossip in traditional China. Other topics of interest include the history and philosophy of reading in China, the poetry of Du Fu, and the theory of lyric. Prof. Chen teaches seminars on classical poetry and Chinese literary history, as well as various undergraduate courses on classical Chinese and literature in translation.