Jin Liu is currently Associate Professor of Chinese language and culture in the School of Modern Languages at Georgia Tech. She received her Ph.D. in East Asian literature and culture from Cornell University (2008) and her M.A. in Chinese linguistics (2000) and B.A. in Chinese language and literature (1997) from Beijing University (PKU). Her interdisciplinary research studies contemporary Chinese media culture and popular culture from the perspective of language, writing, sound, voice, and music.
She is the author of the book, Signifying the Local: Media Productions Rendered in Local Languages in Mainland China in the New Millennium (2013). Drawing on cultural and literary theories, media studies, and sociolinguistics, this book examines recent cultural productions rendered in local languages and dialects (fangyan in Chinese) in the fields of film, television, the Internet, popular music, and fiction in mainland China. She co-edited and contributed to the book, Chinese Under Globalization: Emerging Trends in Language Use in China (2012), a concerted effort to present a scholarly, panoramic view of linguistic struggles and linguistic politics in China’s reform years. She has widely published articles on Chinese independent films, eco-cinema, rap music, Internet culture, youth culture, sociolinguistics, pedagogy, and digital humanities in peer-reviewed journals including positions: Asia Critique (Duke University Press), Journal of New Music Research, East Asian Journal of Popular Culture, Journal of Chinese Cinema, Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (University of Wisconsin-Madison Press), Twentieth-Century China (Johns Hopkins University Press), Modern Chinese Literature and Culture (Edinburgh University Press), Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese, Chinese Language and Discourse, Chinese as a Second Language, and Digital Scholarship in the Humanities (Oxford University Press). Many of her publications can be accessed at https://gatech.academia.edu/JinLiu and at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jin-Liu-165/research. Her ORCID identifier is https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6757-8008.
Dr. Liu is working on her second book which explores the creativity and innovation of Chinese script in modern and contemporary China, spanning over 150 years from the mid 19th century to the 21th century and covering fields in science, religion, art, film, fiction, and the Internet. At the same time, she has worked on two interdisciplinary Digital Humanities projects with her VIP team (one on fractality in Chinese literature; the other on computerized tonal congruence index for Chinese rap songs). In addition, she is building a digital resource center for the cultural study of Chinese dialects at http://sites.gatech.edu/fangyanmedia/.
Dr. Liu teaches Chinese language and culture at Georgia Tech. Earlier she taught at Cornell University, Middlebury College summer Chinese school, and Princeton University summer program in Beijing (PIB). She alternately serves as the Director of the Chinese program and Director of the Chinese LBAT, School of Modern Languages’ intensive summer Chinese language program in China. Dr. Liu received the Georgia Tech CETL/BP Junior Faculty Teaching Excellence in 2012, and the Institute-wide award of “Student Recognition of Excellence in Teaching” respectively in 2012, 2014, 2018, 2021, and 2022.
Dr. Liu serves as a board member of China Research Center (CRC). She is a founding member of the organizational committee of Georgia Tech Global Media Festival, and brought the awarded film director and photographer, Mr. Wang Jiuliang, and the comic artist Mr. Li Xiaoguai, an icon of Chinese youth culture and Internet culture, on campus in 2017 and in 2018. She served as the coordinator of the Chinese Government Scholarships (each about $10,000) for ten years (2011-2021).
Dr. Liu has served as an anonymous reviewer for the peer-reviewed journals: Popular Music, Twentieth-Century China, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Journal of Chinese Cinema, Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Chinese Language and Discourse, Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association, and International Journal of Chinese Language Education.
In her free time, she enjoys singing, practicing Taiji, travel, hiking, bird photography, cooking, gardening, biking, or walking with their dog, Peanut.