Stephen Owen (sinologist)

Stephen Owen (born October 30, 1946) is an American sinologist specializing in Chinese literature, particularly Tang dynasty poetry and comparative poetics. He teaches Chinese literature and comparative literature at Harvard University and is James Bryant Conant University Professor, one of only 25 Harvard University Professors. He is a member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of American Philosophical Society.
Owen graduated from Yale University in 1968 and continued at Yale as a graduate student, receiving a Ph.D in 1972 under Hans Fränkel. He taught at Yale from 1972 to 1982, when he went to Harvard. He has been a Fulbright Scholar and held a Guggenheim Fellowship, among many other awards and honors. He was jointly awarded the 2018 Tang Prize in Sinology with Yoshinobu Shiba.
Scholarly career.
Owen has written or edited dozens of books, articles, and anthologies in the field of Chinese literature, especially Chinese poetry. "Harvard Magazine" reported in 1998 that colleagues see Owen as "a soaring and highly imaginative free spirit," comparing him to the eighth-century Chinese calligrapher Huaisu and to the foremost Tang dynasty poet, "the unfettered, convention-defying Li Bai..."
Of "The Poetry of Meng Chiao and Han Yü," James J. Y. Liu remarked that it "represents a remarkable achievement, especially for a first book..." A reviewer in "China Review International" wrote "reading Stephen Owen's "The Making of Early Chinese Classical Poetry" shocked me, the way a seismic shift in paradigms will."