Department Faculty

"I am an intellectual historian of Warring States and early imperial China (500 BCE to 200 CE).  I am interested in the religions, philosophies and aesthetic and political ideas that prevailed during this time. While I mostly work with textual materials, including not only transmitted texts but also recently excavated texts written on bamboo, I have begun to examine the archaeological record and to incorporate that into my research as well. I am the author of Individualism in Early China: Human Agency and the Self in Thought and Politics (Hawaii, 2010), and Music, Cosmology, and the Politics of Harmony in Early China (SUNY Series in Chinese Culture and Thought, forthcoming). My latest research critically examines the history of cross-ethnic relations and culture change along the southern frontier in pre-Han and Han Empire China. My articles have appeared in Journal of Chinese Religions, Asia Major, Philosophy East-West, Early China, Journal of Chinese Philosophy, T’oung Pao, Dao, and the Journal of the American Oriental Society. I enjoy teaching about crossing borders and boundaries of any kind: intellectual, political, cultural, ethnic, physical, gendered, and scientific and/or religious."