In 1991 he received his Ph.D. in Chinese language and literature from Columbia University with a dissertation on “The Life and Times of Lin Yutang.” His most recent publication is “The Phantom of the Clock: Laughter and the Time of Life in the Writings of Qian Zhongshu and His Contemporaries” in Jessica Milner Davis and Jocelyn Chey, eds., Humour in Chinese Life and Culture: Resistance and Control in Modern Times (Hong Kong University Press, 2013).