Steven Yao
Edmund A. LeFevre Professor of English
Steven Yao authored two books, Translation and the Languages of Modernism (Palgrave/St. Martins, 2002), and Foreign Accents: Chinese American Verse from Exclusion to Postethnicity (Oxford, 2010), which was selected by the Association for Asian American Studies for its Book Award in Literary Studies. He is co-editor of Sinographies: Writing China (Minnesota 2008), Pacific Rim Modernisms (Toronto 2009), and Ezra Pound and Education (2012). Yao was awarded an ACE Fellowship for the 2012-13 academic year. In 2005, he received a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. Yao earned a doctorate in English from the University of California, Berkeley.
Recent Courses Taught
Introduction to Literary Study
Poetry and Poetics
Introduction to Asian American Literature
Anglo-American Modernism
James Joyce
The Pound Era
Research Interests
Global modernisms, 20th-century American literature, Asian-American literature (especially poetry), 20th-century British literature, Pacific Rim modernisms, translation theory, translation history, cross-cultural poetics and jazz studies.
Distinctions
External Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center, 2005-06
Selected Publications
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“The Angel Island Poems: Chinese Verse in the Modern Diaspora,” A New Literary History of Modern China, David Der-Wei Wang and Jing Tsu, eds., (Harvard University Press, 2017)
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"Oceanic Etymologies: Shanghai and the Transpacific Routes of Modernity," Verge: Studies in Global Asias, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring 2017), pp. 77-106.
- Foreign Accents: Chinese American Verse from Exclusion to Postethnicity (Oxford University Press, 2010), chosen for Book Award in Literary Studies by Association for Asian American Studies, 2012
- Translation and the Languages of Modernism: Gender, Politics, Language (Palgrave, 2002)
- Ezra Pound and Education, a volume of essays co-edited with Michael Coyle, (National Poetry Foundation, 2012)
- “World Poetries,” Special issue of Wasafiri, Journal of Caribbean, African, Asian and Associated Literatures in English, No. 38, Spring 2003 (with Laura Chrisman)
- “Translation Studies and Modernism,” A Handbook of Modernism Studies, Jean Michel Rabaté, ed., (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013): 205-220
- “The Rising Tide of the Transpacific,” Literature Compass, 8/3 (2011): 130–141
- “Translation,” Ezra Pound in Context, Ira B. Nadel, ed. (Cambridge University Press, 2010), 33- 42
- “A Rim with a View: Orientalism, Geography, and the Historiography of Modernism,” Pacific Rim Modernisms, Mary Ann Gillies, Helen Sword and Steven Yao, eds. (University of Toronto Press, 2009), 3-33
- Sinographies: Writing China, a volume of essays coedited with Eric Hayot and Haun Saussy, (University of Minnesota Press, 2008)
- Pacific Rim Modernisms, a volume of essays coedited with Mary Ann Gillies and Helen Sword, (University of Toronto Press, 2009)
College Service
Advisory Board, Center for Teaching and Learning, 2013-present
Chair, Advising Task Force, 2008-09
American Studies Committee, 2007-present
Asian Studies Committee, 2004-present
Committee on Academic Policy, 2004-05
Task Force on English Language Instruction, spring 2004
Ad Hoc Committee on Multicultural Alumni Relations (ex officio), fall 2003
Writing instructor for POSSE program, summer 2003
Professional Affiliations
Modern Language Association
American Comparative Literature Association
Association for Asian American Studies
Modernist Studies Association
Appointed to the Faculty
2002Educational Background
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
M.A., University of Texas, Austin
B.S., University of Texas, Austin
