Research
My research interests are modern Chinese literature, word and music studies, digital humanities and queer studies. In 2020, I published my monograph The Condition of Music and Anglophone Influences in the Poetry of Shao Xunmei, which was reviewed favorably by Prof. Nick Admussen in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture (September, 2020):
It is well-made, carefully thought through, and easy to read. It will be of interest to anyone who researches Shao Xunmei, and would be quite worthwhile for those who study the aesthetics of Republican Shanghai. Many researchers in Chinese literature would benefit from its advocacy of an internalized, daily practice of feminist criticism. Its influence on teaching feels prospective: this book might usefully inform either a transnational, translingual course on cosmopolitan Shanghai or a survey of early twentieth century poets whose breadth included Chinese writers like Shao. [Full-text review here]
The book also received positive feedback from Prof. Paul Manfredi in Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature (March, 2022):
This is the kind of work that crosscultural influence studies should be, readings that are close to the point of microscopic, revealing affinities and departures that demonstrate what is really involved when writers work to both emulate their influences and establish their own creative voices in a new language and cultural context […] it is certainly a rigorous reading with respect to the ideas he advances about how feminism, poetry, and human experience intersect […] Tian Jin’s book is an excellent study of a single author, and one that draws in larger issues of literary and cultural influence and dispatches them very well. [Full-text review here]
In 2025, I served as the third author of a textbook entitled American Literature: Viewing, Listening, and Speaking. My research enables me to develop teaching programs and provide learning support. I have good written and verbal communication skills, and I can communicate complex and conceptual research ideas to a diverse range of groups.
Works in Progress
- From Poetic Voice to Artificial Voice: AI and the Afterlife of Qing Zhu’s Art Songs.
-The Literary Salons of Republican Shanghai: An Interactive Game Based on Lu Shaofei’s Tearoom Conversations.
-My second book project Interart Modernism in China: Music, Poetry and Transnational Aesthetics.