Linda Rui Feng

 

Linda Rui Feng’s research interest is in the conception of spatial knowledge and its role in the collective imagination, particularly during the late medieval and early modern eras. She works with materials ranging from maps and geographical treatises to collections of anecdotes and narratives, in order to pose questions about how space was rendered tangible through both image and text. This research interest ties together her monograph City of Marvel and Transformation: Chang’an and Narratives of Experience in Tang Dynasty China as well as her more recent SSHRC-funded project, “How Does the Yellow River Begin? — Spatial Imagination from a Mongol Expedition to Ming-era Maps.” As part of her interest in the interconnections among cultural technologies, knowledge, writing, and the senses, she is currently working on the cultural history of aromatics in late Medieval China.  

 

She is also the author of the novel Swimming Back to Trout River, which was a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and was nominated for the Giller Prize as well as the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel.