Weigui Fang - Biography#

Weigui Fang is a native of Shanghai. In 1981 he graduated from Shanghai Internat. Studies U and then taught at the German Dep. there. His MA was a comparative paper on Brecht and Lu Xun. He obtained a PhD degree in Comparative Literature at the Technical U of Aachen in 1992. After completing his post-doc in 1992-96 at Trier U, he worked as research fellow (1996-2000) at Göttingen U. In 2002, he completed the German ‘habilitation’ at Erlangen U. Fang belongs to a small number of Chinese academics who have attained habilitation in Germany.

Since 2006: Distinguished Professor, School of Chinese Language and Literature, Beijing Normal University (BNU); Yangtze River Scholar of the Ministry of Education of China (the highest possible award granted in China). Recognized as an “expert obtaining special allowances from the State Council”. Chairman of the Academic Council of the Centre for Studies of Literary Theories (one of the key state research institutes in the humanities and social sciences funded by the Ministry of Education of China, affiliated with BNU); also named Director of the Centre for Literature and the History of Ideas at BNU.

His main research focus is on comparative literature, comparative poetics, the history of concepts, sociology of literature, and international Sinology. He has published 5 monographs in German, 6 monographs in Chinese, 1 monograph in English, edited 8 books, translated 4 books, and has also published more than 140 scholarly articles (in Chinese, German, English and French). He organised several high-profile international conferences at BNU, most notably a symposium on World Literature with a stellar cast of scholars from Europe, China, and the US (he published the papers as an ed. vol. in English, 2018); these fora have fostered a sustained dialogue with European scholars. Fang is one of the most renowned humanities scholars in China today; he is frequently invited to participate in conferences throughout China and also in Europe. (1995 characters)