This semester, my first on the other side of the table when it comes to graduate students, I've found myself returning to comfortable old favorites in the Early Modern [Chinese] Fiction course I've been assigned to teach. Lacking any restrictions other than the loose ones posed by the title of the course, I've elected to…Read more Salty olives and sweet wine
chinese literature
Embodying Guanyin, Embodying yaojing
For those who missed AAS this year, or went to one of the other amazing sounding panels on Saturday morning that were scheduled at the same time as ours, here's a recording of my paper: Paper abstract: In Liu Xiang baojuan, a popular Qing religious performance text, when exemplary protagonist Liu Xiangnü is likened to…Read more Embodying Guanyin, Embodying yaojing
The Complete Work In Search of the Origins of the Deities of the Three Schools《三教源流搜神大全》
Quickly, because I really should be writing. Thanks to following Shuge Library (@shugeorg) on Twitter, a group that hosts and shares high quality scans of Chinese works in the public domain, The Complete Work In Search of the Origins of the Deities of the Three Schools《三教源流搜神大全》came to my attention a few months ago. With over 120…Read more The Complete Work In Search of the Origins of the Deities of the Three Schools《三教源流搜神大全》
Outlandish fables and Taiwanese curriculum reform
In the late 19th century, the period I focus on in my dissertation, one way of responding to the many crises that China was undergoing involved trying to morally realign society in such a way as to prevent such crises from ever happening again. This was on one level cosmic: heaven will no longer send…Read more Outlandish fables and Taiwanese curriculum reform
Audio recording of my paper presentation from the Association for Asian Studies Conference 2015
Click here for the paper abstract. Click here for the full panel abstract. For the sake of turning this into a movie for upload to Youtube, I included some of the images shown during my presentation. They aren't cued to the talk, however, so you needn't worry about following along. All images are also located…Read more Audio recording of my paper presentation from the Association for Asian Studies Conference 2015
Ten Thousand Treasures of 1895
Printed in 1895, the Newly Expanded Druggist's Ten Thousand Treasures Encyclopedia (新增懸壺萬寶全書) contains far more than medical advice. Even if you can't read a word of Chinese, the charming illustrations alone lead me to recommend that you take a couple minutes to browse through the work anyway. There's a lot more going on in it…Read more Ten Thousand Treasures of 1895
Didactic literature that no longer seems edifying: what’s the point?
Lienü zhuan is a collective biography of exemplary Chinese women compiled at the end of the 1st century BCE. It was, according to Ban Gu, a 1st century CE historian, intended to counteract the influence of lower-class, immoral women who destabilized the dynasty and to provide the emperor with positive examples of female virtue so…Read more Didactic literature that no longer seems edifying: what’s the point?
Maiden Huang 黃寶姑 (3)
(1: Tainan local women, Taiwan local religion) (2: Mother Gu Temple 辜婦媽廟) This post has been a very long time in coming because Huang Baogu's story is so rich with issues to discuss that it keeps threatening to turn itself into an article or a book chapter. Which, in fact, it may end up becoming…Read more Maiden Huang 黃寶姑 (3)
Novel learning
One of the components of job application materials for academics is the teaching statement. Given the amount of introspection needed, it is not an easy piece to write, although it is the perfect piece for stewing over indefinitely. Over all these years of learning how to make myself write (with varying degrees of success depending…Read more Novel learning
Sleuthing
When Che Xilun, preeminent Chinese scholar of baojuan (and incredibly kind man, if our email correspondence is anything to go on), compiled his catalogue of baojuan in China, Zhongguo baojuan zongmu 中國寶卷總目, he did so in part by collating previous catalogues into composite entries for each title. Given that his catalogue includes entries for over…Read more Sleuthing
Far From Formosa 