Robert E. Hegel

For the last 35 years Robert E. Hegel has taught at Washington University in St. Louis, currently as Liselotte Dieckmann Professor of Comparative Literature and Professor of Chinese. His research centers on imperial China’s fiction, especially from the period of 1500 to 1900, when the novel and short story came of age. His first book surveys novels of the century of transition between China’s last two dynasties; his second, Reading Illustrated Fiction in Late Imperial China, explores the book as commercial object and the development of reading and writing practices. His many articles address narratives of all kinds, including, most recently, legal texts.