Michael Berry
Ph.D. Columbia University
Associate Professor, Contemporary Chinese Cultural Studies
Office: Humanities and Social Sciences Building, 2230
Phone: (805) 893-7807
Email: berry@eastasian.ucsb.edu

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 is the author of a collection of interviews with contemporary Chinese filmmakers entitled Speaking in Images, which includes extended dialogues with leading directors including Hou Hsiao-hsien, Zhang Yimou, Stanley Kwan, and Jia Zhang-ke and two forthcoming books, A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film, which explores literary and cinematic representations of atrocity in twentieth century China, and Jia Zhang-ke’s Hometown Trilogy, which offers extended analysis of the films Xiao Wu, Platform, and Unknown Pleasures. Also an active literary translator, Berry has translated several important contemporary Chinese novels by Yu Hua, Ye Zhaoyan, Chang Ta-chun, and Wang Anyi. 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.

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

Selected Publications

• A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film (Columbia University Press, forthcoming 2008).
• Jia Zhang-ke's Hometown Trilogy (British Film Institute, forthcoming 2008).
• Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers (Chinese Edition) ( Rye Field, Taipei 2007).
• Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers (Columbia University Press, 2005).

Book length translations:

• 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).
• To Live by Yu Hua, Translated and with an afterword by Michael Berry (Anchor
  Books, 2003).
• 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)
• 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