Amy Zhang 

張元昕

2023-24 Graduate Student Associate: Ph.D. Candidate in East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University

Bio

Amy Zhang is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. Her dissertation project, “Writing Communities into Being: The Art of Linked Verse,” is the first transnational study of linked verse as it was practiced in pre-modern East Asian cultures, with a focus on China. As the product of multiple poets working together on a single poem, linked verse sheds new light on the cultural landscape and social networks of medieval China and beyond. With this project, she seeks to expand a hitherto-understudied field and investigate the significance of collective authorship, its temporal and spatial manifestations, and its implications as a literary form still in practice.

Research Interests: Premodern Sinitic Poetry, Manuscript Culture, Social Networks, Literary Criticism.