Anne McLaren

Biography

Born in Sydney, Anne E. McLaren trained as a sinologist at the Australian National University, graduating with a PhD in Chinese Literature in 1983. She studied Chinese language at the Mandarin Training Center, Taipei, in 1975 and at Fudan University in Shanghai from 1978 to 1979. Anne McLaren held academic appointments in Chinese Studies at La Trobe University, Melbourne, from 1991 to 1999 and at the University of Melbourne from 2000 to 2020. She is internationally known for her research into Chinese oral performance traditions, Chinese print culture, Chinese traditional fiction, and Chinese Intangible Cultural Heritage. In 2010 she was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities for her pioneering work on the oral and ritual culture of Chinese women. She is the author or editor of eight books and numerous studies on the cultural history and literature of China in the early modern period. Major works include Memory Making in Folk Epics of China: The Intimate and the Local in Chinese Regional Culture (New York: Cambria Sinophone Series, 2022); Slow Train to Democracy: Memoirs of Life in Shanghai, 1978 to 1979 (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2020); Performing Grief: Bridal Laments in Rural China (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008); Environmental Preservation and Cultural Heritage in China (as co-author, Illinois: Commonground Publishing, Sustainability Series, 2013); Chinese Popular Culture and Ming Chantefables (Leiden: Brill, 1998); Chinese Women: Living and Working (as editor, London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004); Dress, Sex and Text in Chinese Culture (as co-editor with Antonia Finnane, Melbourne: Monash Asia Institute, 1999); The Chinese Femme Fatale: Stories from the Ming Period (Sydney: University of Sydney East Asian Series No. 8, Wild Peony Press, 1994).