KAIWEI XIA
E-mail: xenoxia@qq.com
Working Experience
2022–2024 Lecturer, Foreign Studies College, Hunan Normal University
2024– Associate Professor, Foreign Studies College, Hunan Normal University
Part Time Job
2024– Secretary, English Literature Studies Division, Chinese Association of Studies of Foreign Literature
2023– Member, Ethic Literature Society, China Comparative Literature Association
2022– Director, Faculty Office of Literature and Culture, English Department, Foreign Studies College, Hunan Normal University
2022– Member, Humbolt Center for Transdisciplinary Studies
2022– Editor, Journal of Foreign Languages and Cultures
Education
2017–21 PhD in English Language and Literature at Nanjing University. Dissertation title: “From Mixed Styles to the Real Synthesis: On Don DeLillo’s Symptomatic Realism.” Supervised by Prof. Dr. HE Ning.
2019–20 Visiting scholar to the Faculty of Art (English Unit of Literary Studies) of KU Leuven (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven), Supervisor Prof. Dr. Pieter VERMEULEN.
2015–17 M.A. in English Language and Literature at Nanjing University. Thesis title: “An Allegory of Disaster: Narrativity and Being in DeLillo’s Falling Man.” Supervised by Prof. Dr. DAN Hansong.
2010–14 B.A. in English (Pedagogical Orientation) at Hunan First Normal College. Research paper title: “On Henry James’ Writing Techniques in ‘The Jolly Corner’.” Supervised by Prof. WANG Chunhui.
Research Interests
Literary Concerns: Contemporary Anglophone fiction; World Literature and Translation Theory
Theoretical Concerns: (Post-)Structuralism, Psychoanalysis
Fund &Project
Principal Investigator of the 2024 Hunan Normal University Fund Project, “A Study of Anglo-American Contemporary Novels from the Perspective of Speed” (2024042422).
Principal Investigator of the 2022 Hunan Province Youth Social Science Fund Project, “A Study of Anglo-American New Realist Novels from the Perspective of Medical Humanities” (22YBQ034).
Publications
1. Journals
Ø Xia, Kaiwei. “‘Thou Art Translated’: The Poetics of Emulation in Transformative Shakespearean Cultures’.” In Literatura, Cultura e Política: A Obra de João Cezar de Castro Rocha em Questão. Eds. José Luís Jobim and Roberto Acízelo de Souza. Rio de Janeiro: Makunaima, 2025, pp. 691–709.
Ø Xia, Kaiwei. “Illuminating the Contemporary: An Interview with Professor Zhang Zhongzai on His Study and Teaching of British Literature.” Foreign Languages and Cultures 4 (2024): pp. 150–156.
Ø Xia, Kaiwei. “The Political Function of the Lyrical: Reevaluating Domestication and Foreignization Through the Untranslatable.” Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 5 (2024): pp.125–136.
Ø Xia, Kaiwei.“DeLillo’s Libra and the Subjunctive Mood as Fictionalization.” In Journal of Languages and Cultures 7.2 (2023): pp. 117–133.
Ø Xia, Kaiwei. “Poetic Rhetoric: The Object and Metaphor in ‘Rose-Coloured Teacups’.” Foreign Literatures 3 (2020): pp. 144–153.
Ø Xia, Kaiwei. “Subject with-out Object: A Posthumanist Interpretation of Melancholia.” Foreign Literature 6 (2019): pp. 65–73.
2. Translation
Ø Pfannebecker, Mareile and J. A. Smith. Work Want Work: Labour and Desire at the End of Capitalism. Trans. Xia Kaiwei. Beijing: Life Bookstore Publishing Co. Ltd., 2025.
Ø Don DeLlio. The Silence. Trans. Xia Kaiwei. Nanjing: Yilin Press, 2022.
Ø Deutscher, Penelope. How To Read Derrida. Trans. Xia Kaiwei. Beijing : Beijing United Publising Co. Ltd., 2021.
Ø Beckman, Frida. Gilles Deleuze. Trans. Xia Kaiwei. Nanjing: Nanjing University Press, 2019.
Presentations
Ø “DeLillo’s Libraand the Subjunctive Mood as Fictionalization.” Young Scholars Forum on Contemporary Foreign Literature. Nanjin: Nanjin University, 14-16 Oct. 2025.
Ø “Art as the Technology of Being: Technical Redemption in Zero K.” 22nd Annual Conference of the China Association for the Study of American Literature: American Literature and Ecological Civilization. Lanzhou: Lanzhou University,1-3 Nov.,2024.
Ø “An Oikos-Based Sense of Time: The Question of Speed in the Narrative Structure of White Noise.” International Forum on Speculative Literary and Visual Narrative on Ecological Crisis: Dystopia, Cli-fi. Sci-fi. Climate and Society. Shenzhen: Shenzhen University, 18-19 Nov., 2023.
Ø “From ‘Howling Wildness’ to ‘Breath of the Wild’: A Humboldtian Understanding of Videoludic Cosmos.” Alexander von Humboldt: Ways of/in European Modernity. Changsha: Hunan Normal University, 11 Oct., 2023.
Ø “Symptomatic Histoire, or Don DeLillo’s Realist Imagination.” International Society for Fiction and Fictionality Studies (ISFFS/SIRFF) Second International Conference (2022). Chicago: University of Chicago, Mar. 2022.
Ø “Systematic Entropy and the Temporal Sturcture of White Noise.” The Annual Conference of Foreign Literature and Writer Association of Jiangsu Province (2020). Zhenjiang: Jiangsu University, 4–6 Dec., 2020.
Ø “Post-realism and Pastiche: Don DeLillo’s Symptomatic Writing.” Panel address. VAL-symposium 2019: Modernismestudies––Studying Modernism. Leuven: Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 22 November, 2019.
Ø “Nameless Imagination: A. S. Byatt’s Object-Oriented Poetics.” Panel address (paper admitted). Knowledge and Experience: Foreign Studies of Linguistics, Literature and Translation. Hangzhou: Zhejiang University, 22–23 June, 2019. (First prize)
Ø “Melancholia, Fetish, and Writing as Reifying Technē.” Panel address (paper anthologized). Annual Conference of the Association of Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art in China & The Forum for Young Scholars: “Material, Media and Technology: The New Direction of Contemporary Literary Theories Studies”. Changsha: Hunan Normal University, Changsha, 16–18 Nov., 2018.
Ø “Narrative Lines and String Theory: The Comforters’ Contingent Reality.” Panel address (paper admitted). Reproducing and Reconstructing Reality: International Conference on Realism(s) in Post-WWII Literature. Nanjing: Nanjing University, 26–28 Oct., 2018.
Ø “Despair and Death: Kierkegaard in DeLillo.” Keynote speech (paper admitted). The 11th English Major Forum for the Graduate Students in Jiangsu Province. Zhenjiang: Jiangsu University, 19–20 Nov., 2016.
Honours, Grants, and Awards
2025 Outstanding Researcher of the School of Foreign Languages, Hunan Normal University
2025 Key Young Faculty Development Program Recipient, Hunan Province
2022 First Prize in the National Exchange Event for Outstanding Teaching Cases in Foreign Language Curriculum Ideology and Politics
2022 Second Prize (First in Group) in the Hunan Province Curriculum Ideology and Politics Competition
2022 Second Prize in the Teaching Competition on Curriculum Ideology and Politics, Hunan Normal University