Haun Saussy

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Caleb Powell Haun Saussy (born February 15, 1960) is an American professor at the University of Chicago. Raised in Nashville, Tennessee, by his parents Haun and Tupper Saussy, he pursued his undergraduate studies at Duke University. He is currently married to Olga V. Solovieva and has five children.

Saussy is the son of socialite Lola Haun Saussy^[1] and Tupper Saussy, an American musician and conspiracy theorist. Raised in suburban Nashville, Tennessee, he attended Deerfield Academy before earning his B.A. in comparative literature and classics from Duke University in 1981. He subsequently received his M.Phil. and Ph.D. in comparative literature from Yale University in 1987 and 1990, respectively. Between his undergraduate and graduate studies, he focused on linguistics and also studied Chinese in Paris and Taiwan.

Saussy previously served as an assistant professor (1990–1995) and associate professor (1995–1997) at the University of California, Los Angeles. He then held the positions of associate professor, full professor, and chair of the Department of Comparative Literature at Stanford University before joining the faculty at Yale University in 2004. In 2011, Saussy transitioned to the University of Chicago.^[2]

Saussy's first book, The Problem of a Chinese Aesthetic (Stanford University Press, 1993), examines the tradition of commentary surrounding the early Chinese poetry collection, Shi-Jing (known in English as the Book of Songs). This was followed by Great Walls of Discourse and Other Adventures in Cultural China (Harvard University Asia Center, 2001), which explores the unique methodologies and perspectives within Chinese scholarship. He also co-edited Sinographies with Steven Yao and Eric Hayot.

Saussy worked as editor on multiple books, including Women Writers of Traditional China: An Anthology of Poetry and Criticism (Stanford University Press, 2000),^[3] Partner to the Poor: A Paul Farmer Reader written by Paul Farmer (University of California Press, 2009),^[4] and The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry: A Critical Edition written by Ernest Fenollosa and Ezra Pound (Fordham University Press, 2008),^[5]. Additionally, Saussy and Perry Meisel contributed introductions and textual notes as editors to the reissue of Wade Baskin's translation of Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics (Columbia University Press, 2011),^[6].

In 2016, he published The Ethnography of Rhythm: Orality and Its Technologies (Fordham University Press), which subsequently won the Scaglione Prize^[7] for Comparative Studies from the Modern Language Association. This was followed in 2017 by Translation as Citation: Zhuangzi Inside Out (Oxford University Press). He also co-edited and translated A Book to Burn and A Book to Keep (Hidden): Selected Writings of Li Zhi (Columbia University Press, 2016), alongside Rivi Handler-Spitz and Pauline Chen Lee.

In addition to his scholarly work, he is an avid cyclist and a passionate memorizer of verb paradigms and lyric poetry. He has contributed to various art installations, including the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in San Jose, California. His articles cover a wide range of topics, from the imaginary universal languages of Athanasius Kircher to Chinese musicology, the Qing dynasty novel, Honglou meng, and the history of oral-poetry theory. He also edited the American Comparative Literature Association's 2004 report on the state of the discipline.

He co-maintains the blog www.printculture.com with others. His editorial responsibilities include serving as co-editor for Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews and Critical Inquiry. He is also a member of the editorial boards for Zhongguo Xueshu / China Scholarship, Comparative Literature, Warring States Papers, Modern Philology, Cross-Currents, and Health and Human Rights: An International Journal, among others. Additionally, in collaboration with Lazar Fleishman of Stanford University, he edits the "Verbal Art" series, which is currently published by Fordham University Press.

Saussy is currently married to Olga V. Solovieva, a Yale University Ph.D (2006) and researcher at Nikolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland. He has two children from his first marriage, Liana and Caleb, and three from his second marriage.^[8][9]

• President (2009–2011) of the American Comparative Literature Association.^[10]
• Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (since 2009).^[11]
• Graduate President (2007–2011) of the Alpha of Connecticut Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.

• Web site at the University of Chicago