Yiheng Zhao (1943-), Professor of Semiotics and Narratology at the College of Literature & Journalism, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China, is currently the Director of ISMS (the Institute of Semiotics & Media Studies), Chairman of the Academic Committee of ACCS (The Association of Chinese Communication and Semiotic Studies), and member of the Collegium of IASS (The International Association of Semiotic Studies).
He graduated from Nanjing University (B.A. 1968), the Graduate School of the Academy of Social Sciences (M.A. 1982), and the University of California, Berkeley (Ph.D. 1987). He taught at the School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London, for almost 20 years before resettling in China.
He specializes in formal studies of art, literature, and culture. Since the late 1970s, he wrote two dozens of books and around 250 essays on those topics. His major works include The Uneasy Narrator (1994), Toward a Modern Zen Theatre (2001) in English, The Muse from Cathay (1983), Semiotics of Literature (1984), Comparative Narratology (1994), The Lure of the Other Bank (2003), Semiotics: Principles and Problems (2011), A General Narratology (2013), and Philosophical Semiotics (2017) in Chinese. Some of his works were republished in his 8-volume Selected Works (2013), and 12-volume Collected Works (2019).