Ph.D.; Chinese history, University of California, Los Angeles
MA; Chinese history, University of California, Los Angeles
BA; Chinese history, University of British Columbia
He received his doctorate from UCLA in Chinese history, specializing in Ming (1368 - 1644)
intellectual history. His dissertation, "The Rogue Classicist: Feng Fang (1493 - 1566) and his
Forgeries," dealt with a set of alternate versions of major texts in the Confucian canon. Unraveling
these forgeries required an examination of their material and social context of their creation and of
major and minor issues in mid-Ming classical studies. The topic entailed a close study of the collection,
ownership and dissemination of books as well as an inquiry into the nature and role of Ming paleography,
since most of the forgeries were written in a unique, pseudo-ancient script. The two most successful
of the forgeries, versions of the Great Learning and the Poetry Classic, turn out to be
complex responses to major (but sometimes overlooked) issues in the study of these texts.
His research languages include Chinese, Japanese and French, knowledge of German. He is a member of
the graduate fields of East Asian Literature, Asian Studies, and History at Cornell.
Courses:
Asian 1102 FWS: Stories of Deception: Lies, Cons, Hoaxes and Fakes Asian 2209 Script and Culture in East Asia
Asian 2212 Introduction to China
Asian 3352 Technologies of Knowledge
Asian 4437/6611 Research Methods in Pre-Modern China
Asian 4467/6667 Commerce and Culture in Later Imperial China ChLit 3307 Readings in Classical Chinese Literature
ChLit 6605 Seminar in Chinese Fiction and Drama
Major Publications:
"Artifacts of Authentication: People Making Texts Making Things in Late Imperial China,"
forthcoming in Francois Louis and Peter Miller, eds., Antiquarian Life and Learning in Late
Renaissance Europe and Late Imperial China, Yale University Press, 2007.
"Old Scripts, New Actors: European Encounters with Chinese Writing, 1550-1700," forthcoming in
East Asian Science, Technology and Medicine 26 (forthcoming Winter 2006)
"Not Written in Stone: Ming Readers of the Great Learning and the Impact of Forgery"
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 66/1 (June, 2006)
