Lingchei Letty Chen

Lingchei Letty Chen is the Chair of East Asian Languages and Cultures and a Professor of Modern Chinese Language and Literature at Washington University. She also holds an Affiliate Professorship in Comparative Literature. Her research focuses on identity politics, memory studies, and postcolonial theory, with a specialization in modern Chinese literature and cultures across Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the diaspora.

She earned her PhD from Columbia University. Her work interrogates the dynamics of cultural identity, globalization, and trauma through analyses of literary narratives. Notable publications include Writing Chinese: Reshaping Chinese Cultural Identity (2006) and The Great Leap Backward: Forgetting and Representing the Mao Years (2020), which explore memory and historical trauma in Chinese contexts.

Her current research project examines Nationalist cultural policies and literary production in 1950s–60s Taiwan during the Cold War, extending her focus on authoritarian regimes and memory politics. She teaches courses on modern Chinese literature, diaspora studies, and comparative literature.

Her academic approach emphasizes the political dimensions of literature, particularly how marginalized groups negotiate identity under state and imperial pressures. She advocates for an ethical, humanistic scholarship that confronts historical silences and trauma.