Lian Duan is a Senior Lecturer in Chinese at Concordia University, Canada. With PhDs in Art Education and Literary Theory, he has previously taught comparative literature at Sichuan University, China, and Chinese literature and art at the State University of New York at Albany and Williams College, USA. His research covers visual culture, art history, contemporary art, comparative literature, and critical theory, particularly, theories about image, narrative, and semiotics. He has published extensively on art and literature, including 15 books in Chinese. His most recent publications include Visual Culture: A Semiotic Approach to Art History and Contemporary Art (2018) and a translation of Mieke Bal, Semiotics of Narrative: Essays in Visual Analysis (2017).