Department of Chinese Language and Literature

Tongji University has a time-honored tradition in humanities while it is well known for remarkable achievements in science, technologies, and engineering. Since the May Forth Movement period, Tongji people has long been recognized as a crucial role in literary creation and academic discussion. At that time, Tongji students, Wei Shizhen and Zong Baihua, etc. were main contributors to one of then prominent periodicals the Journal of the Young China Association.

The Discipline of Chinese Language and Literature at Tongji dates back to 1946, when the Department of Chinese Literature was established at the School of Arts and Sciences. In 1949, the School of Liberal Arts, newly created one year ago, was soon incorporated into Fudan University, together with other Tongji disciplines in humanities. Before that, here had gathered a large number of scholars and writers of far-reaching influence both at home and abroad, such as Guo Shaoyu, Chen Quan, Zhang Shizhao, Zong Baihua, Feng Zhi, Yin Fu, and Yang Yiyan.

The re-establishment of the Discipline of Chinese Language and Literature at Tongji took place in 1993, marked by the birth of the Department of Culture and Arts at the School of Humanities and Law. It was renamed as the Department of Chinese Language and Literature in 2003. In 2011, the first-level discipline Chinese Language and Literature was authorized and began to grant master’s degree. Two years later, the MFA degree program received approval. Currently the Department also awards doctoral degree in the field of literary aesthetics. During this period, a wide variety of distinguished scholars and writers including Ma Yuan, Zhu Dake, Wang Hongsheng, Zhu Hengfu, Yu Daxiang, and Qian Hong successively provide instruction here. The Department has won a considerable reputation throughout the world for its great success in talent cultivation, academic research, and practical service since the day of re-establishment.

Disciplinary Construction

The discipline’s coverage comprises five sub-disciplines, that is, ancient Chinese literature, modern and contemporary Chinese literature, theory of literature and art, comparative literature & world literature, and Chinese philology. With the master’s degree program in the discipline of Chinese language and literature, as well as the MFA degree program and the doctoral program in the field of literary aesthetics, the discipline has formed a continuous talent-cultivating mode from undergraduate to doctoral level.

The Department of Chinese Language and Literature consists of three major institutes including modern and contemporary Chinese literature, theory of literature and art & comparative literature, and ancient Chinese literature & philology. They are supplemented by three research platforms, namely Lu Xun Research Center, Poetics Research Center, and Creative Writing Center, and the Department thus forms an outstanding team of faculty with absolute sincerity and solidarity.