Xin Zou

Xin Zou is the Director of the Chinese Language Program and an Associate Professor of Global China Studies at NYU Shanghai. Her academic training and professional experience bring closely together Chinese literature, culture, and language pedagogy. She received her BA in Chinese Language and Literature from Peking University, China, MA and PhD in Chinese Literature and Culture, and MS in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. Prior to joining NYU Shanghai, Xin Zou worked at Princeton University, USA, for a decade, where she taught, conducted research, and held administrative posts in the Department of East Asian Studies, Chinese Language Program, and Princeton-in-Beijing Summer Language Program.

A scholar of classical Chinese literature and culture, Xin Zou deals broadly with the interaction between social-cultural changes, language, and literature, and, in particular, the emergence of new genres that reshaped the Tang-Song literary landscape. She has published peer-reviewed articles in T’ang Studies (USA) among other journals as well as book chapters on Tang narratives and their intersection with other literary genres. Dedicated to extending the reach of classical Chinese literature to a broader global audience, Zou is also actively engaged in translating and annotating Sima Qian’s Shiji (Indiana University Press, USA), classical tales (World Scientific, Singapore; Bloomsbury, UK), and contributing essays on Tang literature to The Routledge Handbook of Traditional Chinese Literature (Routledge, UK).

Xin Zou’s second area of research and writing focuses on Chinese language pedagogy. Having earlier co-authored Eyes on China: An Intermediate-Advanced Reader of Modern Chinese (Princeton University Press, 2019), she is now exploring new approaches in language program development to: 1) further integrate language learning with content instruction; and 2) incorporate original research in undergraduate coursework. Her ongoing research in this field also includes a historical study of language reforms in modern China and their implications for contemporary language pedagogy.

Xin Zou’s teaching encompasses both the Chinese language, including all levels of modern and classical Chinese, and its literature and thought. In teaching, as in research, she aims to reveal the richness and complexity of China’s past and present through the Chinese language.

Select Publications

• Jing Wang and Xin Zou, “Between Progressive and Conservative: Yuen Ren Chao’s ‘Sayable Chinese,’ Its Historical Context and Modern Applications,” Special Issue on Yuen Ren Chao 赵元任专刊, Journal of Research on International Chinese Teaching and Learning Resources 国际中文教学资源研究 4: 2 (Aug. 2026), 93-120
• Chih-p’ing Chou, Jincheng Liu, Xin Zou and Henry Zhao, Small Things Writ Large: An Intermediate Reader of Modern Chinese.Forthcoming (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, Jan. 2026), 572 pp
• “Reading Tang Anecdotes in the Northern Song: The Case of Yue Shi’s ‘Unofficial Biography of Yang Taizhen’,” in Zhi Chen ed., The Narration of China (Part 2): Medieval and Early Modern China, Expanding Horizons (Leiden: Brill, 2025), 117-148
• “The Prose of Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan,” in Victor Mair and Zhenjun Zhang eds., Routledge Handbook of Classical Chinese Literature (London: Routledge, 2025), 369-380
• Chih-p’ing Chou, Jincheng Liu and Xin Zou, Eyes on China: An Intermediate-Advanced Reader of Modern Chinese (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, Feb. 2019), 504 pp

Education

• PhD, Chinese Literature and Culture
  University of Wisconsin-Madison

• MS, Curriculum and Instruction
  University of Wisconsin-Madison

• MA, Chinese Literature and Culture
  University of Wisconsin-Madison

• BA, Chinese Language and Literature
  Peking University

Research Interests

• Literature and Literati Culture in Tang-Song China 

• Chinese Language Pedagogy

• Language Reforms in Modern China

• Curriculum and Teacher Development

• Classic Literature and Modern Adaptations