Michael Berry

Professor, Asian Languages & Cultures
Department: Department of Asian Languages & Cultures
246-B Royce Hall
Los Angeles, CA 90095
berry@humnet.ucla.edu
Website

Michael Berry’s areas of research include modern and contemporary Chinese literature, Chinese cinema, popular culture in modern China, and literary translation. Berry’s approach is transnational and his work addresses the richness and diversity of Chinese art and culture as it has manifested itself in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other Sinophone communities.

Michael Berry is the author of A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film,which explores literary and cinematic representations of atrocity in twentieth century China, Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers a collection of dialogues with contemporary Chinese filmmakers including Hou Hsiao-hsien, Zhang Yimou, Stanley Kwan, and Jia Zhangke, and the monograph, Jia Zhang-ke’s Hometown Trilogy, which offers extended analysis of the films Xiao Wu, Platform, and Unknown Pleasures. His most recent book is is full-length interview with the award-winning film director Hou Hsiao-hsien entitled Boiling the Sea: Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Memories of Shadows and Light (in Chinese). (Taipei, INK, 2014). Berry is currently completing a monograph that explores the United States as it has been imagined through Chinese film, literature, and popular culture, 1949-present. He is also the co-editor of Divided Lenses: Screen Memories of War in East Asia and Modernism Revisited: Pai Hsien-yung and the Taiwan Literary Modernism Movement.

PUBLICATIONS:
Boiling the Sea: Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Memories of Shadows and Light(in Chinese). (Taipei, INK, 2014; Guangxi Normal University Press, 2015).
Jia Zhang-ke’s Hometown Trilogy(British Film Institute & Palgrave Macmillan, 2009; Simplified Chinese edition, Guangxi Normal University Press, 2010).
A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film(Columbia University Press, 2008).
Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers(Columbia University Press, 2005; Traditional Chinese edition, Rye Field 2007; Simplified Chinese Edition, Guangxi Normal University Press 2008).

EDITED BOOKS:

Divided Lenses: Screen Memories of War in East Asia Edited by Michael Berry and Chiho Sawada. University of Hawaii Press, 2016.
Modernism Revisited: Pai Hsien-yung and the Taiwan Literary Modernism Movement. (In Chinese) Edited by Michael Berry and Chien-hsin Tsai. Rye Field, 2015.