Abstract: Leland Poague is Professor of English Emeritus at Iowa State University and a long-time member of the American Society for Aesthetics. Apart from his essays on numerous Hollywood directors and American cinema, he is also the editor of A Companion to Alfred Hitchcock (2011), Conversations with Susan Sontag (1995), and the co-author, with Kathy A. Parsons, of Susan Sontag: An Annotated Bibliography 1948-1992 (2000). In translating Conversations with Susan Sontag, Yao Junwei consulted Leland Poague and, in Spring, 2017, interviewed him via email. The interview centers around Poague's understanding and critique of Sontag's multiple identities, her close connections with European and American literatures and cultures, the tension between aesthetics and morality as represented in her writing, and the legacy of Sontag. Finally, Poague traces the history of Sontag studies in the U.S. and shares his thinking about the orientations in the studies, especially the focus on Sontag's relation to philosophy.

Key words: Sontag, Euro-American connection, aesthetics and morality, legacy of Sontag, Sontag scholarship