Headshot of Liz Weber.

Liz Evans Weber

Assistant Professor of Instruction in Chinese

Research Assistant Professor

PhD, University of California, Los Angeles

Office Location
402 Lattimore Hall
Telephone
(585) 275-4251

Office Hours: By appointment only

Biography

Liz Evans Weber has been teaching Chinese literature at the University of Rochester since 2016, offering a wide range of courses spanning the premodern to contemporary periods (see below).

In addition to teaching, she is an active early-career translator. She has published a translation of the short story “Boundless Night” by Yu Dafu; her translation of the late Qing novel New Story of the Stone by Wu Jianren is forthcoming with Columbia University Press (June 2025). She was recently awarded a 2025 Translation Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts to support her next novel translation, Flower in a Sea of Resentment (Niehai hua) by Jin Songcen and Zeng Pu.

She completed a PhD in Asian Languages and Cultures at UCLA (2015) with research support from a Fulbright-IIE fellowship (2012-2013), and holds an MA in East Asian Studies from Yale University (2008).

Research Overview

Research Interests

  • Translation and translation studies
  • Modern and late Qing Chinese literature
  • Late Qing nationalism and history
  • Issues of migration, race, and labor
  • Asian American studies

Courses Offered (subject to change)

  • CHIN 214:  Dream of the Red Chamber
  • CHIN 216:  Writing Discontent: Political Turmoil, Social Critique and Civic Responsibility in Late Qing Literature
  • CHIN 217:  Writing Volatility and Processing Change: Literatures of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong in the 20th Century
  • CHIN 219:  Monsters, Ghosts, Fairies, & Gods: Encountering the Strange in Classical Literature
  • CHIN 221:  Laborers, Sojourners, Immigrants: Chinese Journeys to the Americas in the 19th and 20th Centuries
  • CHIN 222:  Gender, Sexuality, and Desire in 20th c. Chinese Literature
  • CHIN 223:  Memory, Meaning, and Forging New Futures in Post-Mao Chinese Literature
  • CHIN 224:  Introduction to Chinese-to-English Literary Translation (New spring 2025)
  • CLTR 200:  Topics in Critical Thinking: Literary Representation of Labor and the Laborer

Selected Publications

Translations

  • Wu Jianren 吴趼人. New Story of the Stone 新石头记. Translated by Liz Evans Weber. New York: Columbia University Press, forthcoming June 2025).
  • Yu Dafu (郁达夫), “Boundless Night” (茫茫夜), Liz Evans Weber trans., Renditions 95 (Spring 2021): 9-41.

Research