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Michael Berry
Professor
Contemporary Chinese Cultural Studies

PhD, Columbia University,

Contact Information
University of California, Santa Barbara
Dept. of East Asian Languages & Cultural Studies
Santa Barbara, CA 93106

Office location: 2230 HSSB

Fax: 805.893.3011
Email: berry"at"eastasian.ucsb.edu
Areas of Research
Michael Berry's areas of research include modern and contemporary Chinese literature, Chinese cinema, popular culture in modern China, and translation studies. Berry's approach is transnational and his work addresses the richness and diversity of Chinese art and culture as it has manifested itself in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and overseas Chinese communities. He also holds affiliate appointments with Comparative Literature, Film and Media Studies, and Asian American Studies.

Michael Berry is the author of A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film, which explores literary and cinematic representations of atrocity in twentieth century China, Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers a collection of dialogues with contemporary Chinese filmmakers including Hou Hsiao-hsien, Zhang Yimou, Stanley Kwan, and Jia Zhangke, and the monograph, Jia Zhang-ke’s Hometown Trilogy, which offers extended analysis of the films Xiao Wu, Platform, and Unknown Pleasures. He is currently completing a book-length collection of interviews with the award-winning film director Hou Hsiao-hsien and working on a monograph that explores the United States as it has been imagined through Chinese film, literature, and popular culture, 1949-present.

Also an active literary translator, Berry has translated several important contemporary Chinese novels by Yu Hua, Ye Zhaoyan, and Chang Ta-chun. His co-translation with Susan Chan Egan of Wang Anyi’s Song of Everlasting Sorrow was awarded Honorable Mention for the 2009 MLA Lois Roth Award for an outstanding translation of a literary work Current literary translation projects include the modern martial arts novel The Last Swallow of Autumn (Xia yin) and Wu He’s (Dancing Crane) award winning novel Remains of Life (Yu sheng), a fascinating literary exploration of the 1930 Musha Incident, which was honored with a 2008 NEA Translation Grant.

His work has received generous support from a variety of organizations, including the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, The Weatherhead Foundation, the China Times Cultural Foundation, and the National Endowment of the Arts.

Selected Books
Jia Zhang-ke's Hometown Trilogy (British Film Institute & Palgrave Macmillan, 2009; Simplified Chinese edition, Guangxi Normal University Press, 2010).
A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film (Columbia University Press, 2008).
book coverbook cover book cover Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers (Columbia University Press, 2005; Traditional Chinese edition, Rye Field 2007; Simplified Chinese Edition, Guangxi Normal University Press 2008).

Book Length Translations
Book cover The Song of Everlasting Sorrow: A Novel of Shanghai, by Wang Anyi, translated by Michael Berry and Susan Chan Egan, with an Afterword by Michael Berry (Columbia University Press 2008).
Book cover To Live by Yu Hua, Translated and with an afterword by Michael Berry (Anchor
Books, 2003).
Book cover Book cover book cover Nanjing 1937: A Love Story by Ye Zhaoyan, Translated with an introduction by Michael Berry (Columbia University Press, 2002, Faber & Faber, 2003, Anchor Books, 2004)
book cover Wild Kids: Two Novels about Growing Up by Chang Ta-chun, Translated with an introduction by Michael Berry (Columbia University Press, 2000).

Teaching
  • Popular Culture in Modern Chinese Societies
  • Workshop in Chinese translation
  • Imagining Atrocity in Modern Chinese Literature and Film
  • New Taiwan Cinema
  • Literature and Film in Contemporary China
  • Introduction to the Cultures of East Asia: Modern
  • Asian Literatures: Modern Chinese Fiction
  • Fourth Year Chinese: China Through Cinema
University of California, Santa Barbara

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East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies
University of California, Santa Barbara
4001 HSSB
Santa Barbara, California, 93106-9670
p: 805.893.4505| f: 805.893.7671