Overview
Nick Admussen holds an M.F.A. in poetry writing from Washington University in St. Louis, and a Ph. D. in East Asian Studies from Princeton. At Cornell, his teaching centers on Chinese literature and culture in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His research applies close reading, translation, techniques from sociology, and literary theory in an attempt to read and understand contemporary poetry, and by extension to invent and refine methods of interpretation through which people separated by linguistic or political distance can come to understand one another. His first book is on contemporary prose poetry, and his next research project will cover the poetics of stricture in contemporary China. He is also an essayist, poet and translator.
Publications
Full-Length Works
Recite and Refuse: Contemporary Chinese Prose Poetry. Honolulu: Hawaii University Press, 2016.
Floral Mutter, poems by Ya Shi. Brookline: Zephyr Press, 2020.
"Lu Xun's Yecao: Layers of the Real," a special issue of the Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese, vol. 11 no. 2, Spring 2014.
Selected Scholarly Essays
"Virus as Hermeneutic: from Gu Cheng to Xie Ye," in positions: asia critique, vol. 27 no. 4, November 2019, p. 687-712.
"Embodiment in the Translation of Chinese Poetry," in Chinese Poetry and Translation: Rights and Wrongs, Maghiel van Crevel and Lucas Klein, eds. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019, p. 113-134.
"Network Analysis as Modernist Intervention: the Case of Chinese Poetry Readings," in Chinese Poetic Modernisms, eds. Paul Manfredi and Christopher Lupke. Leiden: Brill, 2019, p. 261-282.
"The Work of the Field," in Chinese Literature Today, 8:1 (Summer 2019), p. 117-123.
"Forms of World Literature and the Taipei Poetry Festival," in the Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese, no. 14.2/15.1 (Winter 2017-Summer 2018), p. 213-244.
"Genre Occludes the Creation of Genre: Bing Xin, Tagore, and Prose Poetry," in the Oxford Handbook of Modern Chinese Literatures, eds. Andrea Bachner and Carlos Rojas. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, p. 578-596.
"Introduction: The Title of Yecao" and "The Poetics of Hinting in Wild Grass" in the Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese, vol. 11 no. 2, p. 8-12, 80-109.
"Trading Metaphors: Chinese Prose Poetry and the Reperiodization of the Twentieth Century" in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, vol. 22 no. 2, p. 88-129.
"A Music for Baihua: Lu Xun, Wild Grass, and 'A Good Story'" in Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews, no. 31, p. 1-22.
Poetry and Short Essays
Stand Back, Don't Fear the Change. Poems. Tuscon: New Michigan Press, 2019.
Neither Nearing Nor Departing. Poems. Greensboro: Two of Cups Press, 2018.
Watching Lumia. Poems. Chicago: Winged City Press, 2013.
Movie Plots. Brooklyn: Epiphany Editions, 2011.
"Being Twenty-One During Coronavirus." China Channel, March 21, 2020.
"Errata." New England Review Online, July 26, 2017.
"Six Proposals for the Reform of Fiction in the Age of Climate Change," The Critical Flame, May 2016.
Translated into Chinese by 奇芳 as "关于气候变化时代文学改革的六点建议" at Chinadialogue, August 12, 2016.
In the news
- Klarman Fellow: Digital media connects people in a polarized world
- A&S welcomes 10 new Klarman Fellows to expanded program
- Translation opens a thriving world of Chinese poetry
- Professor awarded grant for literary translation