Emily Sun
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Comparative Literature
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Emily Sun is Tow Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Translation Studies. She received her B.A. in English and German from Amherst College and her Ph.D. in comparative literature from Yale University. Her research interests include British and European Romantic and nineteenth-century literature, literary relations between China and the West, literary theory, politics and aesthetics, and psychoanalysis and literature. At Barnard, she teaches required courses for the major in Comparative Literature and Translation Studies, including “Introduction to Comparative Literature,” “Topics in Comparative Literature,” and the “Senior Seminar in Comparative Literature”; as well as electives such as "Languages of Loss: The Poetry of Mourning," “Stories and Storytelling: An Introduction to Narrative,” “Fictions of Judgment: Austen and Kleist,” and the “Advanced Workshop in Translation.” She has advised senior theses on a range of topics and looks forward to mentoring future students in developing original, creative, and thoughtful work in comparative literature and translation studies.
Professor Sun is the author of two books, On the Horizon of World Literature: Forms of Modernity in Romantic England and Republican China (Fordham UP, 2021) and Succeeding King Lear: Literature, Exposure, and the Possibility of Politics (Fordham UP, 2010). She co-edited, with Eyal Peretz and Ulrich Baer, The Claims of Literature: A Shoshana Felman Reader (Fordham UP, 2007) and, with Emily Rohrbach, a special issue of Studies in Romanticism, "Reading Keats, Thinking Politics" (2011). Her articles, translations, and reviews have appeared in Studies in Romanticism, the European Romantic Review, the Keats-Shelley Journal, the Yearbook of Comparative Literature, and the Journal of the History of Ideas in East Asia, among other journals. She is currently in the late stages of co-editing, with Orrin Wang, The Cambridge Companion to Romanticism and World Literature, and in the early stages of developing a book project on the aesthetics and ethics of listening in literature and comparative literary criticism.
- B.A., Amherst College, English and German, 1993
- Ph.D., Yale University, Comparative Literature, 2003
Books
On the Horizon of World Literature: Forms of Modernity in Romantic England and Republican China (Fordham University Press, 2021) https://www.fordhampress.com/9780823294794/on-the-horizon-of-world-literature/
[Russian translation published by Academic Studies Press, 2023]
Succeeding King Lear: Literature, Exposure, and the Possibility of Politics (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010; paper 2012) https://www.fordhampress.com/9780823232802/succeeding-king-lear/
Edited Book
Eds., Emily Sun, Eyal Peretz, and Ulrich Baer, The Claims of Literature: A Shoshana Felman Reader (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007) https://www.fordhampress.com/9780823227136/the-claims-of-literature/
Edited Journal Issue
Eds., Emily Rohrbach and Emily Sun, Reading Keats, Thinking Politics. Studies in Romanticism 50.2 (2011) https://www.jstor.org/stable/i23056033
Articles and Book Chapters
"The Recovery of Still Life: On a Gesture in Paul Fry's Poetic Criticism." Special issue of "Essays in Honor of Paul Fry," ed. Eric Lindstrom. Essays in Romanticism 30.1 (2023): 87-101.
"Romanticism, Decolonization, Provincialization." Keats-Shelley Journal 70 (2021): 157-165.
"Reverberations: Traumatic Histories, Cultural Difference, and the Drama of Listening in Eileen Chang's Yuannü and The Rouge of the North." Reading Catastrophe: Trauma and Literature in an Age of Globalization. Eds. Jennifer Ballengee and David Kelman. (Routledge, 2021):100-112.
"Shelley's Voice: Poetry, Internationalism, and Solidarity." European Romantic Review 30.2 (2019): 239-247.
"Shakespearean Retellings and the Question of the Common Reader: Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare and Lin Shu's Yinbian Yanyu." Journal of the History of Ideas in East Asia 13 (December 2017): 92-132
"Dissensus in Two Registers: Tintern Abbey in Taiwan." Teaching Romanticism and Literary Theory. Ed. Brian McGrath. Romantic Pedagogy Commons (online). July 2016.
"Your Friends and Lovers: Perfectionism's Recounting of Romanticism." Stanley Cavell and the Event of Romanticism. Ed. Eric Lindstrom. Romantic Circles Praxis Series (online). July 2014.
"What is Poetry in the Theater of Biopolitics?" Romanticism and Biopolitics, eds. Alastair Hunt and Matthias Rudolf. Romantic Circles Praxis Series (online). December 2012.
"Poetry, Conversation, Community: Annus Mirabilis, 1797-8." The Blackwell Companion to Romantic Poetry. Ed. Charles Mahoney. (Blackwell, 2011): 302-17.
"Facing Keats with Winnicott: Towards a New Therapeutics of Poetry." Studies in Romanticism 46.1 (2007): 57-75.
"From the Division of Labor to the Transformation of the Common: James Agee and Walker Evans's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men." The Ends of Photography. Ed. Ulrich Baer. Figurationen: Gender Literatur Kultur 2.6 (2006): 33-52.
Translations
Michel Foucault, "The Analytic Philosophy of Power," The Japan Lectures: A Transnational Critical Encounter, ed. John Rajchman (Routledge, 2023)
Yu-yu Cheng, "The Origins of Wen in the Chinese Tradition: Proceeding from the Analogy between 'the Pattern of Heaven' and 'the Pattern of Humans'," with Translator's Preface by Emily Sun. Yearbook of Comparative Literature. Vol. 47 (2011): 189-212.
Jacques Rancière, "The Politics of the Spider," co-translated with Emily Rohrbach. Studies in Romanticism 50.2 (2011): 239-50.
Executive Committee, MLA Forum on Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies: Romanticism and Nineteenth Century (2022-27)
Selection Committee, Helen Tartar First Book Subvention Award, American Comparative Literature Association (2024)
Board of Directors, Keats-Shelley Association of America (2021- )
Editorial Board, Yearbook of Comparative Literature (2011- )