tharsen on Oct 26 2009 | Filed under: 2009-10
Two handouts for Prof. Chang’s upcoming talk are available for download
on the CBP downloads page ( http://cccp.uchicago.edu/cbp/ ) :
參考資料 Handout (cbp2009_cps1.pdf)
Powerpoint presentation (cbp2009_cps2.pdf)
Please e-mail me if you have any difficulties with the files.
tharsen on Oct 13 2009 | Filed under: 2009-10
Title: “The Development of the Threnodic Genres in Early China”
Speaker: Jeffrey Tharsen, University of Chicago
Title: “An Ever-Contested Poem: Book of Poetry’s “Hanyi” and the Sino-Korean History Debate.”
Speaker: Jae-hoon Shim, Dankook University
Title: “論古籍研究中的資料考辨問題” (”On Problems with Evaluating Resources in the Research of Ancient Texts”)
Speaker: Chang Pao-san, National Taiwan University
Title: “The Badly Damaged Shiji: Conjectures on Textual Loss and Replacement”
Speaker: Esther Sunkyung Klein, University of Illinois at Chicago
Title: TBA
Speaker: Smadar Winter, University of Chicago
All workshop events will be held at :
Wieboldt Hall, Room 301N (the EALC seminar room)
1050 East 59th Street Chicago, IL 60637
Should you have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to contact me. Should you have any difficulties, I can be reached at (773) 699-9137.
Also, please feel free to forward this message to anyone else who might be interested in coming to the workshop. Looking forward to seeing you all there!
dpmorgan on Mar 25 2009 | Filed under: 2008-09
Here are the texts we would like to work with in the reading session from 9-12 on the Thursday. Please distribute these to anyone who would like to take part. They are case 18 and case 22, from “The Book of Submitted Doubtful Cases” (Zouyanshu) from tomb no. 247 at Zhangjiashan. Professor Yates and I are currently translating all the legal texts from this tomb. I have included the most recent transcription with notes, and the original photographs of the slips. We may only have time to work through one case, but I included both just in case we have time. They are both fascinating examples of Qin law in practice.
dpmorgan on Mar 03 2009 | Filed under: 2008-09
Yao Laoshi has provided the following document in preparation for her presentation on March 15th: 花東甲骨“多丯臣”與相關問題
dpmorgan on Feb 15 2009 | Filed under: 2008-09
Adam has provided this paper this paper to read in advance of his presentation. Because of its large size, I was forced to compress the images. If you would like the original 15mb file, please email Adam.
dpmorgan on Nov 11 2008 | Filed under: 2008-09
Autumn—————–
(Meetings Thursdays from 4:30-6:30 in WB 130 unless otherwise noted)
Oct. 9 (2nd Week)
Daniel Morgan (Ph.D. student, University of Chicago)
“The Planetary Model and Visibility Table for Venus in the -2nd Century Silk Manuscript Wu xing zhan 五星占”
Oct. 24 (4th Week)
Zhang Lidong (Ph.D. student, University of Chicago)
“Cosmological Schema in Cemetery Planning: The Cemetery of Jin Marquises”
*Joint workshop with VMPEA, held Friday at Art History
Nov. 6 (6th Week)
Kevin Huang (Ph.D. student, University of Chicago)
“New sources for the BOOK OF DOCUMENTS?”
Nov. 21 (8th Week)
Hu Pingsheng 胡平生 (Ancient Documents Section. Bureau of Cultural Relics. Beijing, China. Retired)
武威漢簡《王杖十簡》與《王杖詔令簡》導讀小辦
*Friday 12:30-15:30, East Asian Reading Room, Regenstein Library, Room 522
Readings
Dec. 5 (10th Week)
Brian Cooper (Ph.D. student, University of Chicago)
“Quelling the barbarians: Representations of the Other in the Shiji 史記 and Beyond”
*Friday
Winter—————–
(Meetings Fridays from 16:00-18:00 in WB seminar room [301n] unless otherwise noted)
Jan. 15 (2nd Week)
David Sena (Professor, University of Texas, Austin)
“August Ancestors: Conceptions of Lineage in Western Zhou Bronze Inscriptions”
*Thursday, 16:30-18:30 in WB seminar room (301n)
In this project I compare the ancestor lists from three Western Zhou bronze inscriptions, the Shi Qiang pan, the Qiu pan, and the Xian ding, in an attempt to throw light on the genealogical terms that are used to categorize different generations of ancestors. These inscriptions, especially the Qiu pan, demonstrate how ancestral lineages could be constructed into a prestigious pedigree for the vessel sponsor. Although these inscriptions provide little evidence for the type of corporate kin groups usually associated with the term “lineage,” they are nonetheless revealing of the ways in which descent was used as a strategy to bolster claims of political and social legitimacy on the part of the living.
Feb. 16 (7th Week)
Adam Schwartz (Ph.D. student, University of Chicago)
“Two notes on Ancient Chinese Paleography”
*Monday, 16:30-18:00 in WB seminar room (301n)
Mar. 6 (9th Week)
Ethan Harkness (Ph.D. student, University of Chicago)
“Textual and Manuscript Strata in the Kongjiapo Day Book: logic and circumstance in the formation a technical text”
In recent decades, numerous excavated manuscripts known as rishu “Day Books” have come to light in different geographical regions of China. Dating from between the 3rd century BC and the 1st century AD, these texts were all but lost from the transmitted literature from early China, and their modern day rediscovery has attracted significant attention from scholars. Nevertheless, fundamental questions about the nature of these texts remain unanswered, as the majority of studies have focused on either a micro analysis to clarify the workings of particular systems within the texts or have examined them with a sociological view toward gleaning details about daily life in the late Warring States, Qin, and Han China.
In my talk I will take the Kongjiapo Day Book as a case study and try to develop an approach to the text as a
whole.
By means of close reading and codicological analysis of the physical manuscript, I will highlight both textual and manuscript strata that signal a history of formation attributable in parts to editorial logic, scribal tradition, and the physical nature of bamboo manuscripts. It is hoped that on this basis, more meaningful comparisons can be made with other rishu manuscripts and that ultimately a deeper understanding of this important genre of technical texts and its influence on later Chinese culture might emerge.
Mar. 13 (10th Week)
Yao Xuan 姚萱 (Fudan University, visiting researcher at University of Chicago)
“花東甲骨‘多丯臣’與相關問題”
Mar. 26 (Spring Vacation)
Anthony Barbieri-Low (Professor, University of California, Santa Barbra)
“The Cult of the Ancestral Agriculturalist”
Robin Yates (Professor, McGill)
“Law in the Early Han Dynasty”
*Reading session Wieboldt 408, 9:00-12:00 on Zhangjiashan legal documents, followed by talks 13:30-16:30.
Spring—————–
(Meetings Thursdays from 16:30-18:30 in WB seminar room [301n] unless otherwise noted)
Apr. 24 (4th Week)
Christopher Nugent (Professor, Williams College)
“Textual Memory and Memorization in Medieval China: Content, Methods, and Limitations.”
The talk looks at memorization practices in medieval China, focusing on the Tang period. I look at the types of literary texts educated men memorized in the Tang, the methods they used to do so, and also some of the limitations of these methods, particularly compared to methods employed in medieval Europe. My conclusion is that while memorization was a key aspect of dealing with literary texts in this period, scholars have often exaggerated the extent of the memorization corpus and the accuracy with which people learned it. I will also touch on the role of memorization in the circulation of poetry in particular.
May 7 (6th Week)
Esther Klein (Ph.D. student, Princeton University)
“Some Inconvenient Truths about the Zhuangzi Inner Chapters”
Scholars view the Zhuangzi as basically a Warring States period text, though some may admit that it was formally compiled only in the early Han dynasty. In addition, the prevailing view is that the first seven so-called “inner chapters” 內篇 were all written by a person named Zhuang Zhou 莊周, who lived during the Warring States period (4th c BCE). These seven chapters are considered to be the “core Zhuangzi”, the earliest and best representatives of Master Zhuang’s own thought and an important corner-stone of Warring States philosophical Daoism. I am going to argue against this entire picture of the pre-Han Zhuangzi as a text. In doing so, I will draw on many different sources of evidence, but the cornerstone of my argument will be Sima Qian’s 司馬遷 (b.145) Western Han dynasty portrait of Zhuang Zhou and of the text associated with him. Ultimately, I will argue three things. First, the “core Zhuangzi” in Sima Qian’s time and before did not include the seven inner chapters. Second, there is a “core Zhuangzi” suggested by citation patterns and excavated texts, and—regardless of who actually composed this set of texts—the impression they give of their author as a person and a thinker dovetails far more closely with Sima Qian’s characterization of Zhuang Zhou than with the “inner chapters” Zhuang Zhou that philosophers know and love. Third and finally, the Huainanzi 淮南子 is the first text in which “inner chapters” material is massively cited and begins to receive the recognition and appreciation it would continue to receive for the rest of the Zhuangzi’s textual life. My argument neither requires nor proves that Liu An and his retainers put together the inner chapters, but the correlation is meaningful enough to merit serious consideration.
May 22 (8th Week) *Friday
Ian Chapman (Post Doc, MIT)
“Mt. Mao, Mt. Bao, and Wang Ziqiao: Funerary steles and the creation of cultic sites in medieval China”
This talk examines the use of biographical inscriptions at three medieval (focusing on 6th to 7th centuries) Chinese religious sites, each with a different type of main sponsor: Daoists at Mt. Mao (modern Jiangsu), Buddhists at Mt. Bao (Henan), and the imperial state at the Wang Ziqiao shrine on Mt. Goushi (Henan). The mortal remains of lineage ascendants and revered practitioners formed an important component of a cultic site. Inscriptions marking such remains appropriated exceptional lives to sacred spaces, and vice versa. Despite sectarian differences, Buddhist, Daoist and state inscriptions share much in common, testifying to widely accepted generic conventions also shared with ‘secular’ epitaphs. The theme of permanency—believed innate to the medium of stone, and central to reflections on life and death—looms large.
May 28 (9th Week)
Jeff Tharsen (Ph.D. student, University of Chicago)
“Rhyme, Repetition and Rhetoric: An Examination of the Recently Discovered Fan wu liu xing 凡物流形 Texts”
Jun. 4 (10th Week)
P. Ernest Caldwell IV (Ph.D. student, University of Chicago)