Alexei K. Ditter, a graduate student who works with Li at Princeton, praised Li's approach to teaching.

"She knows the material back and forth, and she's very good at letting students connect to the material in their own ways," he said. "She's one of the best teachers I've ever had."

A noted scholar on Chinese literature and history, Li was a junior fellow at Harvard from 1990 to 1993, and has also taught at the University of Illinois and the University of Pennsylvania.

After receiving her B.A. from the University of Hong Kong in 1982, Li earned her Ph.D. at Princeton in 1987.

Her book on narrative structures in early Chinese historiography will be published later this year.

"The book is about developing an understanding about how events were strung together," Li said. "It is an intellectual history and a study of historiography that develops a model for how the early Chinese wrote history."

Her 1993 book, Enchantment and Disenchantment : Love and Illusion in Chinese Literature, explores the concepts of love and waking up from illusions. In it, Li examines Chinese poetry from the 2nd and 3rd centuries B.C.E.

Li will begin teaching at Harvard in September 2000. This weekend, the University will fly her to Cambridge to attend a department meeting about the curriculum for the next decade.