Contact Information
Biography
Zhifan Sheng is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Asian Languages and Literature at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is also pursuing a graduate certificate in Cinema and Media Studies. His dissertation project, entitled “Epistolary Imprints: A Media History of Modern Chinese Letters,” explores the shifting cultural and technological underpinnings of letters as media of inscription, transmission, and memory in modern China. His broader interests include modern Chinese literature and film, media studies, feminist and queer theory, and digital humanities.
Zhifan is currently developing a digital humanities project, “Enveloping Affect: The Epistolary Network of Early Chinese Feminism,” which received the 2026 Digital Humanities Summer Fellowship from the Simpson Center for the Humanities. He is also a co-organizer of “Comparative Rural Criticism,” a Graduate Research Cluster funded by the Simpson Center for the 2026–2027 academic year.
Book Sale Coordinator
Duties: This officer organizes the annual graduate book sale, coordinates students to be present at the book sale, creates flyers to advertise the book sale at UW and in the community. They also contact relevant local libraries, bookstores, and individuals to collect donations for the book sale.
Contact me if: You are interested in volunteering for the annual book sale or have more books to contribute to our sale.
Research
Selected Research
- Zhifan Sheng. "Tianyi and International Feminism in the Age of Early Globalization." Transnational Asia 6, no. 1 (September 2024). https://doi.org/10.25615/ta.v6i1.99.
- Zhifan Sheng. "From Anthropomorphism to Becoming-Animal: Animal Agency in Zhang Guixing’s Nanyang Imagination." Tamkang Review 51.2 (June 2021), 23-44.
- Zhifan Sheng. "数字档案与民国女性期刊研究的方法论反思——以《妇女杂志》数据库为例 Digital Archive and Methodological Reflections on Studies of Women’s Periodicals in Republican China: A Case Study of Databases of Ladies’ Journal." 数字人文 Journal of Digital Humanities 2 (2020): 171-179.