Yang Ye teaches classical Chinese prose, classical Chinese poetry and poetics, and twentieth-century Chinese poetry and prose. His introduction to Chinese civilization course explores the philosophy, history and religion of China with a special focus on fine arts (poetry, calligraphy and painting). He also teaches Chinese cinema in light of major Western film theories, a survey of pre-modern Chinese literature in translation, and graduate seminars on Chinese and Western literary theories.

Professor Ye is the author of two books, Chinese Poetic Closure (1996), a comparative study of Chinese and Western poetic closures, and Vignettes from the Late Ming (1999), a collection of short familiar essays translated, annotated and with an introduction. He has also written a number of articles, book reviews and literary translations, and contributed essays on the translation of Chinese classics to Encyclopedia of Literary Translation into English (2000). While his scholarly interests spread across a wide spectrum of Chinese and Western literature and culture, they are focused primarily on pre-modern Chinese and Western poetry and belles-lettresprose. His favorite poets include Du Fu, John Donne and Baudelaire. His all-time favorite books are Zhuangzi, A New Account of Tales of the World (Shi shuo xin yu), and the late Edward Said’s Representations of the Intellectual.