Professor Ma Bing, a native ofZoucheng, Shandong Province,was born in 1976. In 2004, he graduated with a Ph.D in Literature from what was then the School of Literature and Journalism and Communication of Shandong University (now the School of Literature) in the field of Modern and Contemporary Literature, studying with Professor Kong Fanjin, who was his Dissertation Advisor. He has worked for Shandong Literature and Art Publishing House as Editor, and Director of the Editorial Office. In July 2007, he was transferred to the Institute of Modern and Contemporary Literature of the School of Literature and Journalism and Communication of Shandong University. His primary fields of teaching and research are the study of the History and Historiography of Chinese Literature in the Twentieth Century, and studies in the ‘Hotspots” in the Literature of the New Century. Professor Ma is the author of the monograph Literary Expression and the Evolution of Ethics, as well as of papers and scholarly articles published in various periodicals and newspapers such as Literary Review,Miscellaneous Publications ofStudies in Modern Chinese Literature, Review of Contemporary Writers, Contending Voices in Literature and Art, Reviews of Works of Fiction, The Literary World of the South, The Yangtze River Review, Literature in Shanghai, People's Daily, and Wenyibao. Professor Ma has undertaken and supervised many nationally sponsored research projects, as well as those sponsored at the provinciallevel. He has won the Prizefor Outstanding Achievements in the Humanities and the Social Sciences in Shandong Province, and the Liu Xie Prize for Literary Criticism. He is a member of the Chinese Writers Association, a Guest Researcher at the ChineseMuseum of Modern Literature, one of the first group of Critics-on-Contract of the Shandong Writers Association, and a Writer-on-Contract of the Dayi Literary Collegium of Yunnan.