Rate My Professor Peipei Qiu

Peipei Qiu is Professor Emerita of Chinese and Japanese on the Louise Boyd Dale and Alfred Lichtenstein Chair at Vassar College, where she joined the faculty in 1994 and served until 2025. She earned a BA and MA from Peking University and M.Phil. and PhD from Columbia University. Before Vassar, she taught for two years at Fordham University. Throughout her career at Vassar, she chaired the Department of Chinese and Japanese for ten years, directed the Asian Studies Program, and served as Advisor to the Class of 2021. She taught courses in Japanese and Chinese literature, Asian Studies, Women's Studies, and Japanese language.

Her research focuses on Japanese poetry, comparative studies of Japanese and Chinese literature, Daoist traditions in East Asian literature, the reception history of Daoist philosophy, and women in East Asian literature and societies. Qiu has received the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, Mellon Foundation Grant, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fellowship, Japan Foundation Dissertation Research Fellowship, Columbia University President’s Fellowship, and Japan Foundation Fellowship for Researchers. Her major publications include the books Bashō and the Dao: The Zhuangzi and the Transformation of Haikai (University of Hawai'i Press, 2005), Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan’s Sex Slaves (Oxford University Press, 2014), and its Chinese edition 《日本帝國的性奴隸: 中國「慰安婦」的證言》 (Hong Kong University Press, 2017). Selected articles feature “Why I Write About War” in Collateral Damage: Women who Write about War (University of Virginia Press, 2021), “Documenting War Atrocities Against Women” in The Transnational Redress Movement for the Victims of Japanese Military Sexual Slavery (De Gruyter, 2020), and “The Zhuangzi, Haikai, and the Poetry of Bashō” in Daoism in Japan (Routledge, 2015). Her scholarship has received international recognition from media outlets including BBC, The Wall Street Journal, and Voice of America. As Executive Director since 2020, she leads the AI project “The Eternal Testimony of Chinese ‘Comfort Women’” in collaboration with the USC Shoah Foundation, Comfort Women Justice Coalition, and Nanjing Museum, preserving survivor testimonies through interactive technology.