Charles A. Laughlin has a Bachelor of Arts in Chinese Language and Literature from the University of Minnesota, a Master of Arts, Master of Philosophy, and Ph.D in Chinese literature from Columbia University, and is currently Weedon Chair Professor of East Asian Studies at the University of Virginia. He has published extensively on Chinese literature from the 1920s-1960s, including two books: Chinese Reportage: The Aesthetics of Historical Experience (Duke, 2002) and The Literature of Leisure and Chinese Modernity (Hawai’i, 2008). Laughlin also edited Contested Modernities in Chinese Literature (Palgrave, 2005). His current research is on discourses of desire in Chinese revolutionary literature.