Professor Lee Ou Fan taught Chinese history at Princeton University; then Chinese literature at Indiana University, University of Chicago, UCLA, before he joined Harvard University as Professor of Modern Chinese Literature. In 2004-06, he taught at the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. From August 2006, Professor Lee became Professor of Humanities at the Department of History and Department of Chinese Language and Literature.

Professor Lee is a world-renowned authority in modern Chinese literature and cultural studies, contemporary fiction and Cinema in Pan-Chinese regions. His representative publications include Rhapsodies in Festival Walk (2006) (in Chinese), Desolation and Sophistication: Notes on Eileen Chan (2006) (in Chinese), Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of Urban Culture in China (1999), Voices from Iron House: A Study of Lu Xun (1987), and The Romantic Generation of Modern Chinese Writers (1973). Currently he is completing a book-length manuscript on Hong Kong culture.