Judith Zeitlin is a Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. Professor Zeitlin’s research focuses on Ming-Qing literature, cultural history, and the arts, specializing in Chinese opera and the classical tale. Her work combines literary history with other disciplines, such as performance, music, visual and material culture, medicine, gender studies, and film. She is also a faculty member on the Committee on Theater and Performance Studies. In this episode, she shares how a little luck is needed when building her career, along with lots of passion and hard work.
Judith Zeitlin is a Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. Professor Zeitlin’s research focuses on Ming-Qing literature, cultural history, and the arts, specializing in Chinese opera and the classical tale. Her work combines literary history with other disciplines, such as performance, music, visual and material culture, medicine, gender studies, and film. She is also a faculty member on the Committee on Theater and Performance Studies. In this episode, she shares how a little luck is needed when building her career, along with lots of passion and hard work.
Julie 00:01
Hello and welcome to The Course. I'm your host today, Julie, and I'm speaking with Professor Judith Zeitlin from the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago.
Professor Zeitlin's research focuses on Ming and Qing literature, cultural history, and the arts, with specialties in Chinese opera and the classical tale. Her work combines literary history with other disciplines, such as performance, music, and visual and material culture, medicine, gender studies, and film. She is also a faculty member on the committee on theatre and performance studies, and she is currently on research leave this year, supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
She is here today to talk to us about her career path and how she became a University of Chicago professor.
Welcome to The Course, Professor Zeitlin.
Judith Zeitlin 01:01
Oh, hello, it's great to be here.
Julie 01:03
Can you start us off with a general overview of your career path from your college years to becoming a professor at the University of Chicago? I'll dig into some of the more specifics as we go through the interview, but I'm curious to hear how your journey from undergraduate years to becoming a professor.
Judith Zeitlin 01:25
Yes, well, sure. as you know, I'm a professor of Chinese literature, and I didn't start studying, Chinese until I was in college, and I took an intensive summer course in Mandarin at Middlebury College in Vermont, and it was a very, it was a transformative experience. I fell in love with the language and it really set me on my current path.
There were many other things involved too, but that was sort of the number one thing. And then I went to Taiwan in the middle of my college years for a program in Donghai University in Taichung for six months. And then I took another year off, studying independently, teaching English and hanging out in Taipei.
And then I think once I came back to college, I was pretty clear on what I wanted to do, that I wanted to study Chinese literature.
Julie 02:27
And we will, we'll jump back in time in just a moment and explore some of those moments in your career. But can you tell me broadly what it is that you study now? Where are you currently in your career and your research?
Judith Zeitlin 02:43
Well, I'm, in some ways I'm all over the map and in other ways I'm kind of fairly focused. One of the things that I really love about being in the China field is that there's an enormous amount of freedom, partly because there aren't that many of us teaching Chinese literature, say, at the University of Chicago, and partly because of this great interdisciplinary legacy or orientation at University of Chicago.
So I'll just give you a sense of some of my current projects. I wish I could finish some of them and I am planning to. I'm currently completing a book on the culture of musical entertainment in early modern China. I tend to call myself an early modernist, which is a fairly loose period in my case, probably going from mid-16th century up to about 1800.
And so the book is about Chinese opera and courtesan culture. And it's particularly about voice, musical texts and musical instruments. So that's one project that I've been working on for a very long time. And then I have an NEH grant, this is the National Endowment for the Humanities, to do a complete translate, to support a complete translation, new and annotated of maybe the most famous collection of tales in China. Strange tales from a Chinese studio is one of its names Strange Tales from the Liaozhai, a 17th century collection of ghost tales, but it's really a lot, lot more. There are about 500 of them, some very short, some longer.
And the NEH is really just to support the first volume of that. So the Classical Tale are tales written in Classical Chinese, also known as Literary Chinese and probably date from 5th century up until the 20th century, they're really, they're quite oriented towards Tales of the Strange, but they're not limited to that. And they're written in literary Chinese, or classical Chinese, or sometimes even literary Sinitic, because it was also written in Japan and Korea and Vietnam.
And so, they are, you know, short tales, they have things in common with stories, fairy tales and they have things in common with novellas and they have things in common with Ripley's Believe It or Not. So that's one project that I've been very associated with my whole career.
And then I've also done things like curate an exhibition, an art exhibition at the Smart Museum of Art called Performing Images. The subtitle is Visual Culture in Chinese Opera. That was in 2014,that was really a lot of fun. And then I've also written an opera libretto based on one of the Liaozhai tales. And I've been working with a composer, dear friend of mine and collaborator in Beijing, who's a composer who did his PhD here.
So those are just some of the things that I'm doing and I really enjoy them.
Julie 06:05
Your work is so varied and involves a lot of different disciplines and different mediums. I want to go back to way before you were an academic or even in college, back to when you were a young person. I'm thinking kind of middle school, high school years. What did you think you would become when you were an adult? What did you want to do when you grew up? What were some of your interests? And what did you think your path might look like?
Judith Zeitlin 06:35
Well, I will say that I was a bookworm, and I love to read, and I actually wanted to be a fiction writer, and I also wrote a play in sixth grade that was put on by my school, which was great fun about the first woman president. But I think, and I took a course on playwriting in college, in high school, so I will say that I was always interested in the theater growing up in New York City.
But I sort of, by the time I got to college, I think I took one fiction writing course, I realized that I was more of a scholar type. But I experimented a lot in college. I was interested in the Chinese Revolution, and I was interested in the contemporary, and I gradually both went back to my original love, which was literature, and also, there's a kind of joke that we have in this field, which is I became, subject to the law of sinological regression, i.e., you start off in the contemporary period or the modern period, and then you gradually start going backwards in time. So that's what happened to me.
Julie 07:45
Yeah, I'm curious about the interest specifically in languages and studying other languages. Was that something that was present for you when you were younger? I know you mentioned you took the intensive language course at Middlebury, but where did that that idea or that interest originate for you?
Judith Zeitlin 08:06
Yeah, you know, it's interesting that I didn't mention that because that's also so crucial. I was a language person and I loved foreign languages. I took French. I spent a gap year in France. And when I came back, I was like, sort of, been there, done that. I want to do something different, something more interesting.
And that's partly why I chose Chinese. But I also studied, you know, ancient Greek and Latin in high school of which I remember almost nothing. And I also took German in college. And my, what I'm doing right now for fun is teaching myself Italian. So yeah, I do love languages and Chinese is the best.
Julie 08:45
So you were interested in all of these different languages. What was it about Chinese that really stuck for you? Why was that the one that you ended up building your career around?
Judith Zeitlin 08:56
Well, I think it's pretty funny. A lot of people have a, you know, who, in first I should say I had zero exposure to China. I had, when I grew up, I had one Chinese American kid in my class. It was really, even though I grew up in New York City, it was very it, I really, it wasn't a very diverse population that I was part of.
And you know, so Chinese food was certainly the portal in, but I didn't have a romance about the Chinese character. I think, especially people who work in the pre modern period, you'll find that they had some sort of romance about Chinese characters. I thought it was a really stupid writing system, but what really piqued my imagination was that it was a tonal language, right?
Which means that when you pronounce words in different pitches and different contours, then they mean something completely different, even if for us they would be all spelled “ma”. And I just couldn't imagine what that might be like. And it remains the hardest part of language unless you sort of encountered it early enough that some part of your brain just got it.
It helps later in life if you're musical. But then later I ended up, I still don't think I have a romance for Chinese characters, but I appreciate their incredible richness. And then once I started studying it, I mean, the literary tradition is so unbelievably rich and varied and difficult.
I like puzzles, and it's very much, you have to bring a puzzle mentality to it. So I like solving puzzles, and Literary Chinese is a lot about doing that. I've taught a lot of Literary Chinese in my career, and it's super fun. I love doing it.
Julie 10:46
If you didn't have a lot of exposure to the Chinese language or Chinese people when you were growing up, I'm wondering if you could speak about any particular mentors or people who influenced your career path. It could be when you were younger or maybe more in your undergraduate years or graduate school or subsequent years, but who were some of the important mentors or influences for you in shaping your career.
Judith Zeitlin 11:17
I really don't know if I have a great answer. I mean, I had a lot of great mentors. I mean, the ones that clearly were most influential were my teachers in graduate school.
Julie 11:31
Yeah, were there any in particular that really stood out for you
Judith Zeitlin 11:35
Oh, yes, I was very fortunate to have two amazing teachers at Harvard, which is where I did my whole career until I was an undergraduate there, an MA student, a PhD student. And then I was on the faculty there until I finally fled to the University of Chicago.
And so, I had Professor Stephen Owen who is retired, a Professor of Chinese Poetry, very charismatic and brilliant and wonderful. And my thesis advisor was Professor Patrick Hannon, who unfortunately is no longer with us. And he was a much more low key kind of professor also incredibly knowledgeable and accomplished. And he gave us, gave me a lot of freedom. Both of them did just to sort of do what I wanted and then guide me sort of gently. And so I would say those are the two of my big, big mentors. But in a way I found them after I had already decided to go into the profession.
Julie 12:44
Yeah, so those early years were a bit more self-directed in terms of putting together what your interests were and pursuing those.
Judith Zeitlin 12:53
I suppose so. I mean, I lived in a hippie co-op at Harvard called the Dudley Co-ops. It's still there. And so, I think there were people who were interested in Asian religions and that kind of thing. And I was, I took a course, you know, I took a course my freshman year at Harvard that was influential by Theda Skocpol, a sociologist.
It was on comparative revolutions. It was really a great course. And it compared the French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions. I think she published it as a book. That was really influential.
Julie 13:33
You mentioned that early on wanted to maybe be a fiction writer or a playwright, but then you decided you were a little bit more of a scholar. Can you talk about that shift into pursuing a more academic or scholarly career, especially since the audience of this podcast are students who might be interested in pursuing a more academic path.
What did that shift look like for you? When did that become kind of the path you were going to follow?
Judith Zeitlin 14:06
Oh, that's a really interesting question. I did have, you know, sometimes though people say things to you like you're high school teachers and they don't really mean it, but it you somehow take it to heart. So, I was in this playwriting class with a friend of mine. A famous teacher at my private high school in New York named Miss T, which was short for Hortense Tyroler, and she was, you know, she wore hats with hat pins, and I'm sure she had a very interesting background, and I took playwriting with her, and then she later, and many other courses with her, and she said, you know, “I think you’re scholar, not a writer.” And so maybe that was part of it. It was easier to imagine being a scholar than being a writer because of the structure involved. And it just, it felt more natural. I, I come from an academic family, truthfully. And so, my mother is a professor of comparative literature and classics and retired now, but still has a book of essays coming out, and so obviously she was a huge influence on me. Including to go into Chinese, so it would be something nobody in my family knew anything about.
Julie 15:20
I want to move in to talking about the experience of being an academic. I would first like to hear about what are the things that you like about being an academic, about being a professor? What are the things that are fun?
Judith Zeitlin 15:36
Well, you know, I mean, sometimes I pinch myself, can you believe it? I make my living working on essentially the equivalent of fairy tales. So that's one part of it, I mean, I love what I teach. I love the works that I'm teaching. And interestingly, as I've gotten older and further along in my career, I like teaching more and more.
I've always liked mentoring, especially for graduate students, but even undergraduates or MA students. I love sort of trying to bring out their particular strengths and to sort of guide them, but without, you know, so that they find their own path, but I'm there sort of supporting it and that's really very exciting and I learned so much from my students.
That's another really exciting thing. Of course, I have really great students at the University of Chicago, so I've been very fortunate. So one of the things, it's just kind of to share something I feel so passionate about. So that's one part of it. Of course, you know, I think no one likes grading papers. One of my fantasies is that not only will they, will students be able to write their papers through ChatGPT, but will be able to grade them through ChatGPT. You're supposed to laugh there.
Julie 17:02
I was laughing, I was on mute just so I didn't interrupt the audio
Judith Zeitlin 17:07
I see but I mean, in fact, I think ChatGPT is a really big challenge. It means we have to rethink what we teach, how we teach, and the goals that we are working towards in terms, so I think that the old fashioned kind of undergraduate little paper is maybe going to go in a very different direction.
But I think it's still early days. I will say that teaching on zoom during the pandemic really improved my teaching because I really well because…
Julie 17:41
Oh interesting, I've heard the opposite a lot, but can you tell me about why that improved your teaching?
Judith Zeitlin 17:46
Well, I think overall it improved it. I don't necessarily think I was a better teacher on zoom, but rather I couldn't just sort of coast, right. You know, I've been around the block. I've done a lot of teaching and I had taught this course for instance that I teach called Ghost in the Fantastic in East Asian Literature and Film, and I've taught it quite a lot and but I couldn't coast on it. I had to be more organized, and I also had to think about different kinds of assignments, different kinds of ways of opening up the classroom. And so, when I went back to regular teaching, I felt I had really put a lot more thought and effort into figuring teaching out.
Not on the, not on the graduate level, like not for graduate seminars, but for other kinds of courses that really, it was terrifying, truthfully. It was terrifying to have to get on Zoom like that at the beginning. The bad thing about Zoom is that when you are teaching live, you get a lot of energy from the interaction with students. And I think students get a lot of energy from being with each other and with being the professor. So when you're online, there's that's, that just isn't there.
Julie 19:00
Can you talk about some of the other duties of a professor? I know there's a lot of administrative work or a lot of committee work and other leadership roles. Can you talk a bit about those things and whether they, maybe one thing that you do outside of teaching that is really good or that you really enjoy and one thing that is more of a challenge? What about some of those other duties outside of teaching?
Judith Zeitlin 19:26
Right. I mean, I was Department Chair for three years, and that was, I used to joke, that's the first time I ever had a real job. You know, I had to deal with personnel. I had to deal with budgets. I had to deal with you know, many other kinds of details and crises. And while it was very difficult and stressful, and there was a huge learning curve.
What I did enjoy about it was making things happen, and being able to sort of, again, to be a leader, to have some sort of vision. The tricky thing about being a Department Chair, at least in the humanities, it's like herding cats. You know, you can't, you have to, you can't tell people what to do. You have to really, if you're going to be effective, you really have to work, do a lot of work before meetings.
You have to have consensus. I think it's very important for a department, which is a sensitive ecology, to have, to be, have trust and consensus. And I think we're lucky in my department in East Asian that we have that. And TAPS also, Theater Art Performance Studies, has been just a really wonderful environment. So going to meetings, I don't think most people like going to meetings. That's certainly something that I'd rather not have to do.
Writing letters of recommendation, I have to say, I can't tell you how much time I spend writing letters of recommendation, doing tenure reports, reviewing manuscripts, and so on. And sometimes those are interesting and helpful but I always joke that it's, again, it's like a kind of a Hydra because every time you think you're done, you've cut it all off, another, you know, three or four, you open your email and three or four more snakes have started growing out of the head of the Hydra.
Julie 21:16
Yeah, yeah, that definitely makes sense. And I agree. No one wants to go to meetings or read email, so sounds, similar to many fields. I'm curious, what inspires you in your work these days? It could be something really related to your research. I know you're currently on sabbatical, so it might be more research driven but it might be related to your students or being at the university. But what would you say inspires your work?
Judith Zeitlin 21:46
That's a great question. I mean, to some extent, I am inspired by primary sources and puzzles. So, if I find something that doesn't make a lot of sense to me, or it's really intriguing or, I will want to solve it. In that sense, I have a kind of detective side to me. But I'm also very driven now by, I think, kind of more issues, if not in the world, and certainly in the world as a big W in my smaller world.
I find collaboration super inspiring. It took me a while to realize how much I love collaboration. But some of the things that have inspired me recently, maybe the sort of the newest piece that I've written was actually on race and maritime networks in early modern China. And in this big collection of tales, the Liaozhai, and I wrote it for a book of a friend of mine is co-editing called Approaches to Teaching Liaozhai. So, it's really for students and teachers.
And I had come across this really incredibly short little, it's not even a tale. It's like, just like a little anecdote really called Black Ghosts and I was just really perplexed by it. It was about a man who bought these two Black men in 17th century Shandong. And it was a very disturbing story. And so, because these tales are perched on the border between history and fiction, It's one of the ways they're not like fairytales. I was able to do an enormous amount of work to try and figure it out, to contextualize it, and eventually arguing that there was, I thought that there was detectable some of the racial ideologies that were, and anti Blackness that were being brought into the South and East China Sea along with the Portuguese and Dutch colonialism and imperialism and maritime networks, but it was a long kind of path and I spent an enormous amount of time on what was a very short article.
But that is definitely came out of my desire to, to sort of be part of this conversation and to interrogate my materials in a new way. And that came out of my students, I think, very much in their interests and their concerns.
Julie 24:31
I'm curious what advice you would have for someone who is interested in pursuing a career similar to yours in the humanities in particular, and in an academic career in particular. I know before we started recording that you expressed that you might have different, a different answer than you might have had several years ago. But what advice might you have for someone who is equally as interested and passionate about the humanities and this type of research as you are and what type of field they should, or what they could expect in pursuing this field?
Judith Zeitlin 25:06
Right, well, I think you have to really, you know, as you just mentioned, you really have to love it, be passionate about it. Just kind of want to spend your time partly in drudgery. I mean, there's a lot of drudgery involved, too, and it's a long haul for an uncertain outcome, and the outcomes have become more uncertain.
But at the same time, you know, it's something you do also for itself, and it's something that just for me, it's been a passport in every sort of way into a past, into another world, into all sorts of different places. So, I think you sort of have to be sort of willing to take the risk, to be in a position to take a risk, and to sort of want to do it.
I think that humanities matter more than ever now. We really need people to be in these fields, and I am still hopeful that that's going to become more evident again, that the pendulum may turn a bit. You know, I always think if you go into something because you think it's just practical, that then you can really get in trouble.
You might go into STEM and computers and then find that, in fact, that was yesterday's jobs, not today's jobs, so we don't know what the future is going to bring, and you have to be willing to take a risk, but you also have to be very knowledgeable that it's possible that things won't work out.
I'm a boomer. I was so lucky, luck plays such a big part in whatever happens to us in this world, I feel. And some of that luck is where you're born, when you're born, a whole confluence of things. And of course, you need hard work, you need the smarts, you need passion, but you also need luck.
Julie 27:06
We are just at the end of our time for our interview today, but I'm wondering if we could end on a note on what is on talking about what the most gratifying thing is about your career. We've talked about some of the things that are fun and that inspire you and you've kind of alluded to some things that are gratifying.
But what would you say is the thing that is the most satisfying or gratifying about your career?
Judith Zeitlin 27:32
Well, I, one of the things I mentioned luck, so one of the ways I've been incredibly lucky is that where I came in, I was able to see the transformation in China, especially Beijing firsthand. So when I first went to China, it was 1984 and it was really all bicycles in the streets. And, I went next, went back in 1987.
Things were still really had hardly changed. Maybe there were more. A few, there weren't really private cars yet, even. And then to see this extraordinary change of the city, of the people, of the speed, and across the whole country, I would say that's been incredibly exciting. I was there for the, you know, 2008 Olympics. So, I think that's been very exciting.
Julie 28:29
Thank you again, Professor Zeitlin, for your time today and Course Takers, if you enjoyed listening to today's interview, please check out the other ones, leave us a comment, subscribe, follow and share this episode with your friends and family. You can find out more about the University of Chicago through uchicago.edu or the university's campus in Hong Kong through uchicago.hk. Stay tuned for more. See you around.