Hsiang-Lin Shih has been teaching Chinese language and literature at St. Olaf College since 2013 when she received a Ph.D. degree from the University of Washington, Seattle. Her first book, Poetry of Loss and the Early Medieval Chinese Court of the Warlord Cao Cao (155–220), published in 2024, shows how writers at the Cao court employed their poetic art to establish, develop, and sustain a community in each difficult moment of their intertwined lives. Her other research on Cao Cao’s court and the classical Book of Songs is published in the Philological Investigations (2026), the Journal of the Pacific Association for the Continental Tradition (2021), and The Fu Genre of Imperial China (2019). While researching agricultural literature and court poetry in ancient and early medieval China, she has also brought students to Taiwan and worked on various projects with them, exploring intersections of literature, environment, and diasporic communities.
Projects in collaboration with St. Olaf students
- “Translating the Creativity, Adaptivity, and Sustainability of a Foraging Community in Japanese Colonial Taiwan.” In collaboration with Ryan Carlisle ’26, John Shorter ’26, and Max Xu ’26, 2026.
- “Searching for the Extinct Bluefin Tuna: English Translation of a Taiwanese Novella by Wu Ming-Yi.” In collaboration with Xiao Qing Situ ’25 and Mary Wu ’24, 2024.
- “Memories of Agricultural Yilan, Taiwan.” In collaboration with Hana Anderson ’20, Anthony Faure ’20, Sofia Reed ’20, and James Sandberg ’20. <https://pages.stolaf.edu/agriculturalyilan/> 2019.
- “Mapping Taipei in Chu T’ien-hsin’s Novella ‘The Old Capital.’” In collaboration with Leah Suffern ’17. <https://pages.stolaf.edu/mtoc/> 2017.
Publications on world language education
- “Teaching for Social Justice: Incorporating Gender-Inclusive Language in World Language Classrooms” (with Charlize Wang). L2 Journal 17.1 (2025): 1–18. <https://doi.org/10.5070/L2.48699>
- “Literacies for LCTLs: Sports Vlog.” Literacies in Language Education, CARLA, 2025. <https://carla.umn.edu/literacies-lctls-lesson-plans/>
More about me
- Activated Poetry, Almanac Life <https://sites.google.com/stolaf.edu/hsiang-linshihanadventure/>