Overview
Edward Gunn's teaching focuses largely on twentieth-century Chinese fiction and drama, film, cultural criticism, and popular culture. He has worked in each of these areas with graduate students in East Asian Literature, Comparative Literature, Theater Arts, and other fields. His most recent book-length study is Rendering the Regional: Local Language in Contemporary Chinese Media (2006), on the use of local languages in the media and literature of China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. This study in fiction, reportage, and advertising, television, film, radio, and music draws on literary and cultural studies, the sociology of culture, and philosophy of language.
Apart from translations, his other book-length publications include Rewriting Chinese: Style and Innovation in Twentieth-Century Chinese Prose (Stanford, 1991), Twentieth-Century Chinese Drama: An Anthology (Indiana, 1983), and Unwelcome Muse: Chinese Literature in Shanghai and Peking, 1937-45 (Columbia, 1980), which surveys Chinese literature under the Japanese occupation. He received his doctorate at Columbia University. He is a member of the Association for Asian Studies and the Modern Language Association, where he served on the Committee for Texts and Translations.