Zhuoyu Lin (林卓宇) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard University. His research focuses on the formation of modern Chinese readerly subjectivity in the context of the nineteenth-century hermeneutic turn. Lin’s dissertation examines shifting conceptions of what it means to read, the material and social contexts in which the reading took place, and the phenomenological experience of reading itself. Through case studies of literary works from the late Qing through the late twentieth century, his project traces how modern practices and understandings of reading developed within Chinese literary communities. While focusing on modern Chinese literature, Lin’s interdisciplinary research bridges literary theory, intellectual history, and cultural studies.
Research interests: General and comparative hermeneutics; the history of criticism and reading practice; Anglo-Chinese literary discourse; Global Modernism; and modern Chinese literature and thought.