The Substance of Fiction: Literary Objects in China, 1550–1775 By Sophie Volpp. Premodern East Asia New Horizons. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022. x + 245 pp. $140.00 (cloth), $35.00 (paper), $34.99 (eBook)

Wenting Ji is an assistant professor in Chinese language at Duke Kunshan University. She received her Ph.D. in Chinese Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her M.A. in Chinese Literature from National Taiwan University. Her area of expertise is late imperial/early modern (16th–19th century) Chinese literature, with a focus on how literati and gentry women reconciled the relationship between self and the world and constructed their identities through writings of sensory experiences. She is especially interested in the representation of senses in genres such as tanci (plucking rhymes), xiaopin (vignette), and yiyu (reminiscent words). Her teaching interests at Duke Kunshan include advanced-level Chinese language, classical Chinese, early modern Chinese literature, and Jiangnan culture.