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RESEARCH

Welcome to my research home page. Below are a few of the projects that I hope to tackle in some form

or another over the course of my academic career. I have already explored a few of them in recent and

forthcoming publications; others are long-term interests that drive both research and teaching.

 

 

To Die and Not Decay: Autobiography and the Pursuit of Immortality in Early China

Based on my dissertation, this study addresses the development of subjectivity and historical consciousness in early Chinese literature through a discussion of the narratology of biography and autobiography. This work will focus primarily on the autobiographical and philosophical writing of Ge Hong (283-343), but will also consider many of his contemporaries as well as a cross-section of autobiographical writing. Forthcoming, early 2009.

 

 

GeHongresidence

 

Philosophy and Faith in Early Medieval China

This project will explore the social and political philosophy of Ge Hong's Outer Chapters to the Master Embracing Simplicity. Although Ge Hong is known chiefly through is Inner Chapters, which detail "Daoist" techniques of transcendence, his lengthy Outer Chapters has escaped significant study over the last three decades. Building on the work of Jay Sailey and notable Chinese scholars, this project will analyze Ge Hong's so-called "Confucian" work and contextualize it within early medieval intellectual and cultural history.

 

BaopudaoyuanHangzhou

 

Anthology of Chinese Autobiography

This study will result in a scholarly translation of autobiographical texts from the early Han dynasty to the early modern period. The goal will be to present early Chinese autobiography in a volume that has interdisciplinary application in an undergraduate setting, providing both specialists and non-specialists with a point of entry into a literary genre that has few accessible translations and, currently, no anthologies in English.

 

ren xiong

 

Parallax View: Exemplary Officials in the History of the Jin

This project will explore the archetype of the exemplary official in the History of the Jin, an early Tang historical work covering the Sima family Jin dynasty (265-420), by focusing on two seminal figures from the Eastern Jin epoch, Wang Dao and Xie An.

 

xie an

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

all files in pdf format

To Die and Not Decay: Autobiography and the Pursuit of Immortality in Early China

        Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies (Forthcoming, 2009)

"(Mis)conceiving the Self in Early China: Western Approaches to Early Chinese

         Autobiographical Writing," in Beating Devils and Burning Their Books

          Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies (Forthcoming, 2009)

  

"Self as Historical Artifact: Ge Hong and Early Chinese Autobiography"
 Early Medieval China 9 (2004): 71-103

"Ge Hong"
Dictionary of Literary Biography: Classical Chinese Writers: Pre-Tang Era (-598), edited by Curtis Dean Smith (Columbia, SC: Bruccoli Clark Layman, 2008)

"Ji Kang"
 Dictionary of Literary Biography: Classical Chinese Writers: Pre-Tang Era (-598), edited by Curtis Dean Smith (Columbia, SC: Bruccoli Clark Layman, 2008)

"Gan Bao "
Dictionary of Literary Biography: Classical Chinese Writers: Pre-Tang Era (-598), edited by Curtis Dean
Smith (Columbia, SC: Bruccoli Clark Layman, 2008)

To Die and Not Decay: Autobiography and the Pursuit of Immortality in Early China (unpublished dissertation)

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