Steve Riep

Steve Riep, Professor of Chinese and comparative literature, specializes in modern and contemporary Chinese literature, film, and culture. He is an affiliated faculty member in both the Asian Studies and International Cinema Studies programs at BYU. From 2018-2021 he was a BYU Humanities Center Fellow. Riep currently serves as the inaugural coordinator for BYU's Masters in Professional Language (MAPL) program. He has served on campus as head of the Chinese section of the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages (2010-2013 fall 2014, and fall 2019) and as co-director of BYU’s International Cinema Program (2011-2014). Off campus he has served as president of the Western Conference of the Association for Asian Studies (WCAAS) from 2015-2016 and on their executive board since 2009. His articles and reviews have appeared in such venues as Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Modern China, The Oxford Handbook of Disability History, Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles and Reviews, Chinese as a Second Language, and the Dictionary of Literary Biography (Vols. 328, 370, and 387). He has also translated contemporary fiction, poetry, essays, and drama from both China and Taiwan. His research projects past and present have been funded by the Fulbright Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as the College of Humanities and David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies at BYU. His current research projects explore the depiction of disability in modern and contemporary Chinese literature and visual culture and the concept of mobility in modern Chinese Literature in film in regards to disability and gender.

PUBLICATIONS

Projects in Progress

“Visions of Hope? Disability and Mobility in Contemporary Chinese Language Cinema.” (article)

“Beyond Fortunetelling and Massage Therapy: Exploring Visual Disabilities in Contemporary Chinese Cinema.” (article)

“Reading Disability in Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature & Visual Culture.” （Book manuscript under contract with Columbia University Press)

Forthcoming Publications

Selected Recent Publications

Articles and Book Chapters

“Does Text Entry Method Make a Difference on Chinese Writing Test Scores?” With Dana Bourgerie and Troy Cox, coauthors. Chinese as a Second Language, 57.3 (January 2023), pp. TBA

“Hamlet as Political Theater in Beijing: Hamuleite by Lin Zhaohua (1990).” Sinophone Adaptations of Shakespeare: An Anthology, 1987-2007, Alexa Huang, ed., Palgrave Macmillan, 2022, pp. 21-27

“Ya Xian (Ya Hsien).” Dictionary of Literary Biography: Modern Chinese Poetry, Thomas Moran and Christopher Lupke, editors. Columbia, SC: Clark Layman, Inc. for Gale Research, 2021, pp. 18-25.

“Disability, Creativity and the Poetry of Yu Xiuhua.” Chinese Literature Today 7.2 (October 2018), pp. 32-41.

“Disability in Modern Chinese Cinema.” The Oxford Handbook of Disability History, Michael Rembis, Catherine Kudlick, and Kim Nielsen, editors. Oxford: Oxford University Press, August 2018, pp. 407-424.

“A War of Wounds: Disability, Disfigurement and Anti-heroic Narratives of War: The Case of Yu Hua’s ‘The Death of a Landlord'” (“创伤之战：残疾、伤疤与战争的反英雄叙事－－以余华《一个地主的死》为例”). Translated into Chinese by Pan Li 潘莉. Southern Cultural Forum 《南方文坛》2017.2 (Guangxi Writers Association (广西文联）: pp. 79-83. Abridged and translated from “A War of Wounds: Disability, Disfigurement, and Anti-Heroic Portrayals of the War of Resistance against Japan.”

“Bai Xianyong.” Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol 410, Gale Cengage with Layman Poupard Publishing, 2017, pp. 77-168 (Volume Academic Advisor).

“Shanghai Modernism: The New Sensationists.” The Columbia Companion to Modern Chinese Literature, Kirk Denton, editor. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016, pp. 176-182.

“Bai Xianyong.” Dictionary of Literary Biography Volume 370: Chinese Fiction Writers, 1950-2000, Thomas Moran, editor. Columbia, SC: Clark Layman, Inc. for Gale Research, 2013, pp. 3-17.

“Piecing Together The Past: The Notion of Recovery in Recent Fiction and Film from Taiwan,” Modern China, 38.2 (March 2012), pp. 199-232.

“A War of Wounds: Disability, Disfigurement, and Anti-Heroic Portrayals of the War of Resistance against Japan.” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 20.1 (Spring 2008), pp. 129-172.

“The View from the Buckwheat Field: Capturing War in the Poetry of Ya Xian,” in Christopher Lupke, ed., New Perspectives on Contemporary Chinese Poetry. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, pp. 47-64.

Literary Translations from the Chinese

Hamuleite (Hamlet, play by Lin Zhaohua, adapted from Shakespeare’s Hamlet), co-translator with Ronald Kimmons. Sinophone Adaptations of Shakespeare: An Anthology, 1987-2007, Alexa Huang, ed., Palgrave Macmillan, 2022, pp, 27-74

Bai Xianyong (Pai Hsien-yung, Kenneth H. Pai). “Guhui” (Remains of the Dead, short story). Taiwan Literature: English Translation Series, 40, (July 2017, special issue on the writing of Pai Hsien-yung), 83-105.

Wang Wenxing (Wang Wen-hsing). “Dianying jiushi wenxue” and “Lun lücheng yu haiyu: Bogeman dianyingzhong de xushu yu fengge” (Film is Literature and Of Journeys and Islands: Narrative Patterns and Style in Ingmar Bergman’s Films, essays). Taiwan Literature: English Translation Series, 39 (January 2017, special issue on the writing of Wang Wen-hsing), pp. 137-140 and 141-152.

Wang Wenxing (Wang Wen-hsing). “Longtian lou” (Dragon Inn, novella), pp. 279-349, “Canju” (Withered Chrysanthemums, short story), pp. 27-45 and “Yitiao chuiside gou” (Dying Dog, short story), pp. 9-13. In Shu-ning Sciban and Fred Edwards, eds., Endless War: Fiction and Essays by Wang Wen-hsing, Cornell East Asia Series #158, East Asia Program, Cornell University, 2011.

Duo Yu, (“Gathering Up” and “Village History” (poems), pp. 266-269) and Zhou Zan, (“Wings” and “Artisans” (poems) pp. 224-227). In Sylvia Li-chun Lin and Howard Goldblatt, eds., Push Open the Window: Contemporary Poetry from China., Copper Canyon Press, 2011.

On-line Conference Proceedings

“The Depiction of Disability in a Changing World: The Image of the Disabled Body in Chinese and East Asian Cinema and Literature,” Proceedings of the 5th World Humanities Forum, October 31, 2018, Busan, South Korea, pp. 412-419. file:///Users/slr86/Downloads/Proceedings+of+the+5th+World+Humanities+Forum.pdf (pp. 412-419).

“Representations of Blindness and Visual Disabilities in China: An Historical Overview,” Symposium: The History of Blindness and the Blind: Representations, Institutions, Archives An International Perspective, Singer-Polignac Foundation, Paris, France, June 28, 2013, https://www.singer-polignac.org/fr/colloques-sciences-sc-humaines/sc-sch-saison-2012-2013/1137-histoire-de-la-cecite-et-des-aveugles.

DEGREES

BA, U. of California, Berkeley, Chinese and Political Economy
MA, PhD UCLA, East Asian Languages and Cultures and Modern Chinese Literature

INTERESTS

Modern and contemporary transnational Chinese literature and film; ecocriticism; disability studies; war, memory, and trauma in film and literature; and the fiction and essays of Xu Dishan, Wang Wenxing (Wang Wen-hsing) and Bai Xianyong (Pai Hsien-yung, Kenneth H.Y. Pai).