About Boya

The Department of Chinese Language and Literature is one of the three departments housed in Chongqing University’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Science. Home to a vibrant and dynamic community of over thirty scholars, the department has now integrated undergraduate and graduate studies, including doctoral training for students interested in most major aspects of Chinese language and literature.

Faculty members in the department specialize in a wide array of research areas, ranging from classical to contemporary Chinese literature, literary theory to aesthetics and cultural studies, linguistics to classical philology, science fiction to anthropology, and more. With a long history since the founding of Chongqing University in 1929, we approach the study of Chinese language and literature from a rigorously cross-disciplinary perspective, aiming to engender in our students a rich appreciation of the critical nature of Chinese language and literary traditions. By combining researches in literature, culture, aesthetics, and linguistics with studies in history, anthropology, political economy, cultural sociology, visual culture, and film studies, our scholarly endeavors strive to reflect philosophically and theoretically on issues related to “literature” and “culture”. We believe that only through joint efforts with social sciences in historical investigation, textual analysis, and theoretical criticism can our research become truly global and be regarded as indispensable mechanisms for understanding the constitution of society and its historical changes.

Since 2022, the Department has established seven Research Centers (i.e., academic clusters) to conduct cutting-edge, cross-disciplinary teaching and research, including Research Center for Aesthetics and Literary Criticism, Research Center for Global Classical Philology, Research Center for Chinese Classics in East Asia, Research Center for Science Fiction and Techno-Humanities, Research Center for Cross-Cultural Studies of Literature and Anthropology, Digital Humanities Center for Ancient Texts and Local Chronicles, and Research Center for Renaissance Studies and Civilizational Exchanges. In these academic communities, graduate students and third- and fourth-year undergraduate majors may thrive not only with the help of their advisors, but also by participating in reading groups, academic talks, workshops, and conferences organized by these centers.