Co-hosted by Shenghuo Dushu Xinzhi (SDX) Joint Publishing and Yale Center Beijing

Event Time

Friday, June 5, 2026

Registration

18:30-18:30

Dialogue and Q&A

18:30-20:30

Location

Yale Center Beijing 
36th Floor Tower B of IFC Building 8 Jianguomenwai Avenue Chaoyang District, Beijing (Yong'anli Subway Station, Exit C) 

Registration and Fees

Please click “HERE” to register. Please send an email to yalecenterbeijing@yale.edu if there are any problems. If you encounter any payment issues, please attach a screenshot that identifies the issue. 

Ticket: RMB 30 for members of Yale community and Yale or non-Yale students (must submit valid .edu email address to qualify); RMB 60 for regular admission.

*The registration fee is non-refundable. Unless due to a force majeure reason, Yale Center Beijing will not refund any part of the registration fee if a participant fails to attend the event.

Walk-ins will not be accepted.

The event will be in Chinese.

Note: Seats are available on a first-come-first-served basis.

The Event

For a long time, Russian literature has often been framed through the monolithic narratives of “geopolitics” or “nationalism.” In his new book, World-Feeling: Russian Literature and Geopolitics, Jinyi Chu, Assistant Professor at Yale University, draws creatively on the concept of “Weltgefühl” to reposition Russian literature within the broader landscape of world literature and reveal the geopolitical tensions embedded in Russia’s literary articulations of modernity through an interdisciplinary lens.

On June 5, Jinyi Chu will be joined by Xin Ai, Associate Professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University, and Xiaodong Zhang, Professor at Beijing Normal University, for a conversation exploring the multiple dimensions of Russian literature and geopolitics. Together, they will guide the audience through the literary map of Russia and reflect on its complex experience of modernity.

Speakers

Jinyi Chu
Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Yale University

Jinyi Chu is Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures. He received his PhD from Stanford University. His research interests span Russian modernism, Russian poetry, socialist culture, translation studies, and Sino-Russian relations. He is the author of World-Feeling: Russian Literature and Geopolitics and the monograph Fin-de-siècle Russia and Chinese Aesthetics: The Other is the Universal and numerous peer-reviewed articles and public essays on the writing of Lenin, Dostoevsky, Nabokov, Mandelstam, and Pasternak. He is also the Chinese translator of Joseph Frank’s Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time as well as other scholarly and literary works in English, Russian and Chinese.

Xin Ai
Associate Professor, School of Russian Studies, Beijing Foreign Studies University

Xin Ai is an Associate Professor at the School of Russian Studies at Beijing Foreign Studies University. He received his PhD from Peking University and completed joint doctoral training at the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on the history and theory of modern Western art, as well as Russian culture and art history. His publications include monograph on European modern abstract art, as well as Chinese translations of Anton Chekhov’s short story collection The Man in a Case and Think Like an Artist. He has also received research and publication grants from the German Center for Art History (DFK Paris) and the Malevich Society in New York.

Xiaodong Zhang
Professor, School of Foreign Languages and Literature, Beijing Normal University
Associate Editor-in-Chief, Russian Literature and Art

Xiaodong Zhang is Professor at Beijing Normal University and Associate Editor-in-Chief of Russian Literature and Art. His research focuses on Russian literature, intellectual history, and film studies. He is the author of three academic monographs, including a study of Tarkovsky’s cinematic writing, as well as four translated works and one essay collection.

The Moderator

Chenchen Wang
Editor, Shenghuo Dushu Xinzhi (SDX) Joint Publishing