{"id":4273,"date":"2021-07-30T12:01:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-30T16:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/faculty\/profile\/zhenzhen-lu\/"},"modified":"2026-01-26T16:09:01","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T21:09:01","slug":"zhenzhen-lu","status":"publish","type":"faculty-profile","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/faculty\/profile\/zhenzhen-lu\/","title":{"rendered":"Zhenzhen Lu"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am a scholar of Chinese literature and culture and am interested broadly in the practices of reading, writing, publishing and performance in the 16th to 19th centuries. Drawing on archival research in China and Japan, my book The Vernacular World of Pu Songling: Popular Literature and Manuscript Culture in Late Imperial China<\/a><\/em> (Brill, 2025), examines a diverse body of local writings in the manuscripts of village scholars from Shandong in northern China. I have also published articles on the scribal publishers of entertainment literature in 19th century Beijing, and maintain active interests in histories of print and popular culture. Before coming to Bates, I was a researcher at the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures at the University of Hamburg in Germany, a visiting scholar at New York University, and a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, where I received my PhD. Here at Bates, I am excited to teach a wide range of courses in Chinese language, literature and culture.<\/p>\n

Articles and book chapters<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cPu Songling and His Local Rural World\u201d, in Rania Huntington and Roland Altenburger eds., Approaches to Teaching<\/em> Liaozhai’s Strange Tales. New York: Modern Language Association, forthcoming.<\/p>\n

\u201cCasual Collections: Two Manuscripts from Rural Shandong,\u201d in Ranier Lanselle and Roland Altenburger eds, Everyday Archives: Vernacular Literature and the Spread of Knowledge in Early Modern China. <\/em>Paris: Coll\u00e8ge de France, OpenEdition Books, forthcoming.<\/p>\n

\u201cBaiben Zhang: A Scribal Publisher in 19th century Beijing<\/a>,\u201d manuscript cultures<\/em> 19 (2022): 195-244.<\/div>\n

Chinese version: \u767e\u672c\u5f35\uff1a\u5341\u4e5d\u4e16\u7d00\u5317\u4eac\u6284\u66f8\u574a\u7814\u7a76<\/a>, translated by Linda Chu \u6731\u96ef\u742a and Heinrich Yen \u984f\u6db5\u92b3, in \u4e2d\u570b\u6587\u54f2\u7814\u7a76\u901a\u8a0a (Newsletter of the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy), 34.3 (September 2024): 67-116.<\/p>\n

\u201cTouched by a Tale of Friendship: An Early 19th Century Zidishu <\/em>Manuscript<\/a>,\u201d in J\u00f6rg Quenzer et al. ed., Exploring Written Artefacts<\/em>, vol. 2: 1099-1122. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Production of zidishu in Manuscript and Print During the Qing and Republican Eras: A Survey of the Extant Corpus<\/a>,\u201d CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature<\/em>, 37.2 (December 2018): 95-127.<\/p>\n

Chinese version: \u6e05\u4ee3\u6c11\u570b\u5b50\u5f1f\u66f8\u7684\u6284\u5beb\u8207\u520a\u5370\uff1a\u73fe\u5b58\u5b50\u5f1f\u66f8\u66f8\u7c4d\u521d\u89bd, in\u300a\u6cd5\u570b\u6f22\u5b78\u300bLa Sinologie fran\u00e7aise,\u00a0<\/em>vol. 20, forthcoming.<\/p>\n

\u201cA Day in the Life of Pu Songling<\/a>\u201d (with Victor Mair), in David K. Schneider ed., The Poet as Scholar: Essays and Translations in Honor of Jonathan Chaves<\/em>, Sino-Platonic Papers<\/em> 272 (2017): 319-34.<\/p>\n

Translations<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Martin Gimm, \u201cThe Earliest Translation of the Novel Jin ping mei<\/em>: The Manchu Translation of 1708,\u201d in Vibeke B\u00f8rdahl and Rick Lintao Qi eds., Jin Ping Mei: A Wild Horse in Chinese Literature<\/em> (Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Press, 2022), 327-356. [Translated from German]<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Mansion of Enchantment\u201d [\u8ff7\u6a13\u8a18] in Victor Mair and Zhang Zhenjun eds., Anthology of Tang and Song Tales: The Tang Song chuanqi ji of Lu Xun<\/em> (Singapore: World Scientific, 2020), 541-554. [Translated from Chinese]<\/p>\n

\u201cScrounging for a School, A Play by Pu Songling,\u201d CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature<\/em> 33.1 (July 2014): 60-81. [Translated from Chinese, with introduction]<\/p>\n

\u201cEx-husband\u201d by Wang Baozhong, in Josh Stenberg ed., Irina\u2019s Hat: New Short Stories from China<\/em> (Portland, ME: MerwinAsia, 2013), 301-318. [Translated from Chinese]<\/p>\n

Other publications<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cA Friend of a Lifetime: On Yu Boya smashes his zither to mourn a dear friend, a youth book<\/em><\/a>,<\/em>\u201d in Wiebke Beyer and Zhenzhen Lu eds., Manuscript of the Month \/ Manuskript des Monats, <\/em>Hamburg: SFB 950 (Oct. 2017) [German version<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Book review for Bannermen Tales (Zidishu): Manchu Storytelling and Cultural Hybridity in the Qing Dynasty<\/em>, by Elena Suet-Ying Chiu (Harvard University Asia Center, 2018), in Saksaha: A Journal of Manchu Studies<\/em>, 16 (2019-2020): 59-61.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1383,"featured_media":4463,"template":"","class_list":["post-4273","faculty-profile","type-faculty-profile","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","expertise-chinese-language-pedagogy","expertise-late-imperial-china","expertise-literature-and-history","expertise-manuscript-studies","expertise-material-culture","expertise-popular-culture","expertise-vernacular-literatures-of-east-asia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/faculty-profile\/4273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/faculty-profile"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/faculty-profile"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1383"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/faculty-profile\/4273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7614,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/faculty-profile\/4273\/revisions\/7614"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}