Lydia Liu is the Wun Tsun Tam Professor in the Humanities, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University. Her areas of specialization are Modern Chinese literature and culture, critical translation theory, postcolonial theory, new empire studies, and material culture, semiotics, and new media. She is the author of the books The Freudian Robot: Digital Media and the Future of the Unconscious (University of Chicago Press, 2010), The Clash of Empires: The Invention of China in Modern World Making (Harvard University Press, 2004), and Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity - China 1900-1937 (Stanford University Press, 1995). She has also edited or co-edited several volumes in English and Chinese, including, most recently (in English), The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory (Columbia University Press, 2013) and Writing and Materiality in China (Harvard University Asia Center, 2003). Professor Liu will be discussing her recent work on the evolution, textuality, and technology.