Faculty Profile: Dr. Chih-Ping Chen
For Dr. Chih-Ping Chen, originally from Taiwan, her fascination for literature and the English language was inspired from reading Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre when she was just 14 years old. "Although English literature can be quite a challenge, it opens doors to many places," says Chen.
Chen's interest in nineteenth century British literature, which is her field of expertise, eventually brought her to America in 1990. She earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, before starting at Alma College as an assistant professor of English in 2000. She teaches British Survey, Post-Colonial Asian-American Literature, Senior Seminar and a variety of intro-level literature courses.
Chen's publications appear as essays in books such as Asian American Novelists: A Bio-Biographical Critical Sourcebook and in the Encyclopedia of American War Literature. She also has translated numerous works of American fiction, including Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man is Hard to Find and Donald Bartheleme's Great Days, into Chinese. According to Chen, finding the Chinese equivalent to words and phrases in the English language can be a difficult task but has proven to be very rewarding.
"If we think of literature as a representation of human conditions and emotions then we can move people beyond boundaries, and translation is one way to do this," she said.
