Xudong Zhang was born in Beijing and educated at Peking and Duke. He is a Professor of Comparative Literature, and a Professor of East Asian Studies at New York University, where he also directs the International Center for Critical Theory(ICCT). Between 2008 and 2020, he was a Visiting Chair Professor in Comparative Literature and Humanities at Peking University, where he founded and directed, until 2020, the PKU counterpart of ICCT. Among his ongoing concerns are the rethinking of critical theory in global, particularly non-Western, situations and contexts; modernism and modernity; political philosophy; and critical analysis of Chinese literature and culture. Publishing in both English and Chinese, he is the author of Chinese Modernism in the Era of Reforms; The Order of the Imaginary-Critical Theory and Modern Chinese Literature (in Chinese); Cultural Identity in the Age of Globalization-A Historical Critique of Western Discourses of Universalism (in Chinese); Postsocialism and Cultural Politics; Cultural Politics and the Chinese Way (in Chinese); Modernity and Formal Inventions: Toward A Critical Concept of Literary History (in Chinese); and, co-authored with Mo Yan, Writing in Our Times.