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College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures

Gian-Piero Persiani

Profile picture for Gian-Piero Persiani

Contact Information

2051 Foreign Languages Building
707 S. Mathews Avenue, M/C146
Urbana, IL 61801
United States
217-300-6266

Office Hours

M 2:00-3:00 or by appointment
Assistant Professor

Biography

My goal as a historian of ancient literatures and cultures is to bring to light the richness and complexity of premodern literary and artistic phenomena. My research explores the structure of the cultural field at specific points in time, as well as patterns of development over time through practices of reception, appropriation, and adaptation, on both local and transnational scales. My forthcoming book Poets, Patrons, and the Public: Poetry as Cultural Phenomenon in Courtly Japan (Brill, 2025) is a study of the great flourishing of waka poetry in the tenth century. My current book project is a study of the interplay of cosmopolitan and vernacular cultures in medieval East Asia, with a particular focus on the role played by understanding of space and place in shaping attitudes toward language and identity. Other projects include a study of the writings of the courtier and polymath Fujiwara no Kintō and a history of the reception of the Thirty-six Poetry Immortals (sanjūrokkasen). Before coming to Illinois, I taught at Oxford University and was Resident Foreign Researcher at the National Institute of Japanese Literature (NIJL) in Tokyo.

Research Interests

Origins, structure, and development of the literary field
Reception and uses of Sinitic culture in Japan
Waka poetry and poetics
Medieval, early-modern, and modern reception of Heian literature
East Asian literary cultures
History of East-West encounters

Education

PhD Columbia University

Courses Taught

EALC 398 Writers and Sino-Japanese Cultural Interaction 600-1900
EALC/CWL 275 Masterpieces of East Asian Literature
EALC 305 Premodern Japanese Literature in Translation I
JAPN 407 Introduction to Classical Japanese
JAPN 408 Readings in Classical Japanese
EALC/CWL 230 Popular Cultures of Contemporary East Asia
EALC 199 Adaptation and Appropriation in Japanese Cultural History
EALC 550 - Itineraries in Waka Culture

Additional Campus Affiliations

Assistant Professor, East Asian Languages and Cultures
Assistant Professor, Program in Medieval Studies
Assistant Professor, Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies

Recent Publications

Persiani, G. P. (2025). Poets, Patrons, and the Public: Poetry as Cultural Phenomenon in Courtly Japan. (Brill's Japanese Studies Library; Vol. 81). Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004742161

Persiani, G. P. (2020). Poems to Unite and Poems to Divide: What Audience Reactions Reveal About the Social Functions of Heian Waka. Proceedings of the Association for Japanese Literary Studies, 21, 16-27. Article 2. https://journals.library.brandeis.edu/index.php/PAJLS/article/view/1640/1028

Persiani, G. P. (2020). The Public, the Private, and the In-Between: Poetry Exchanges as Court Diplomacy in Mid-Heian Japan. Japan Review: Journal of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies, 35, 7. https://doi.org/10.15055/00007600

Persiani, G. P. (2016). China as Self, China as Other: On Ki no Tsurayuki's Use of the wa-kan Dichotomy. Sino-Japanese Studies, 23, 31-58. Article 2. http://chinajapan.org/articles/index.php/sjs/article/view/44/50

Persiani, G. P. (2014). Tradurre le Poesie del Genji. In A. Maurizi (Ed.), Testo a Fronte (Vol. 51, pp. 161-178)

View all publications on Illinois Experts

College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures

2090 A Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics Building

707 S. Mathews Ave. | MC-146

Urbana, IL 61801

ph: 217-244-1432, fx: 217-244-2223

Email: ealc@illinois.edu

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