Matthew Wild

Matthew Wild is Preceptor in Literary Sinitic in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University, where he works on classical Chinese literature and intellectual history. His book project, Sound Learning: Song and the Aesthetics of Evidence in China’s Long Nineteenth Century, explores how the medieval form of the “ancient song” became an instrument of proof in the culture of evidential learning (kaozheng xue). Centered on the textual remains of the short-lived poet Huang Jingren (1749–1783), the book asks how poetry’s claims on the world came undone in the passage to modern China, as ancient song’s implicit self-evidence became evidence of an estranged national self. An article from the project, “Learning to Hear: Evidential Scholarship and the Ancient Song in High Qing China,” appeared in the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies in 2026.

With Robert Ashmore (UC Berkeley), Matthew is co-authoring Literary Sinitic: A Field Guide, a textbook and self-study handbook for the language and shared written heritage of premodern East Asia. He holds a BA from Reed College and a PhD from UC Berkeley.