Media Contact: Jan Jennings (858) 822-1684

UCSD PROFESSOR TO KEYNOTE CHINESE COMPARATIVE LITERATURE CONGRESS; HIS WORKS WILL BE FOCUS OF ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION

Wai-lim Yip, a professor of Chinese and comparative literature at the University of California, San Diego, will give the keynote address and his works will be the topic of a special roundtable discussion at the Seventh Triennial Congress of the Chinese Comparative Literature Association Aug. 14-18 in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China.

One of Ten Major Modern Chinese Poets as selected by Taiwan’s Ministry of Education, Yip also will be honored with an exhibition from his archives in the Main Library of National Taiwan University in September.

The International Conference Beginning of the New Century: Comparative Literature in a Cross-Cultural Context is the theme of the Chinese Comparative Literature Association Congress. It is being hosted by Nanjing University and Nanjing Normal University.

In conjunction with the congress, Anhui Educational Press, Anhui Province, is publishing special editions of Yip’s Complete (Chinese) Works. Ten of the 12 volumes are scheduled for completion by August. Four volumes are poetry and lyrical prose; one is titled Forty Years of Poetry. Six volumes of critical writing cover topics such as comparative literature, Chinese poetics, Daoist aesthetics, modern American poetry, modern Chinese poetry, modern Chinese fiction, modernism and postmodernism.

 A roundtable discussion on the significance and impact of these volumes, and also the influence of Yip’s English writings in the United States, will include scholars from Taiwan and China, as well as American poet and UCSD professor emeritus Jerome Rothenberg.

A bi-cultural poet, translator, critic, and theorist between Taiwan and the United States, Yip is described by Rothenberg as “the linking figure between American modernism (in the line of Pound) and Chinese traditions and practices.” Yip has written 40 books in both Chinese and English.

Yip’s archival exhibit at National Taiwan University will include letters, early drafts, photos, journal notes, publications in magazines, many of his books and numerous articles. A conference on his work will open the exhibition.

Among Yip’s academic contributions in China are helping to establish a Ph.D. program in East-West comparative literature at Taiwan University and a M.Phil. in comparative literature at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He also was instrumental in launching comparative literature studies at Beijing University.

Yip received a bachelor’s degree in English from National Taiwan University, a master’s in English from Taiwan Normal University, a master’s of fine arts from the State University of Iowa, and a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Princeton University. He has been on the UCSD faculty since 1967.