Early China Seminar Program Archive

“Charting the Early Chinese Oikumene”
Speaker: Min Li, University of California, Los Angeles
“Water Management in Prehistoric China: A Case Study of the Jianghan Plain (6000-4000 BP)”
Speaker: Jianguo Liu, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
“Good Wives? Jealousy and Domestic Violence in Marriages in Early China”
Speaker: Olivia Milburn, Seoul National University
“Understanding Hongshan Core-Zone Households and Communities”
Speaker: Christian E. Peterson, University of Hawaii at Manoa
“What were the Prime Movers for the Transition to Agriculture: Insights from Archaeological Research in Northeast China”
Speaker: Gideon Shelach-Lavi, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
“Cheap Substitutes or Fashionable Luxuries? The Use of Iron Mirrors in the Eastern Han”
Speaker: Yanlong Guo, Smith College
“The Material Culture of Personal Adornment in Ancient China”
Speaker: Sheri Lullo, Union College
“Spring and Autumn Historiography: Formulaic phrasing and hierarchical display in Spring and Autumn records”
Speaker: Newell Ann Van Auken, University of Iowa
“The Inner Asian Frontier Re-examined: Shaping the Study of Artifacts and Mental Boundaries”
Speaker: Yan Sun, Gettysburg College
“Coining Chinese Civilization: The Emergence of Civilizational Consciousness in Early China”
Speaker: Uffe Bergeton, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
“Ornament, Text, and the Creation of Sishen Mirrors in Western Han China”
Speaker: Jie Shi, Bryn Mawr College
“Material Culture, Identity, and Statecraft in the State of Zhongshan, Warring States Period”
Speaker: Xiaolong Wu, Hanover College
“Bronze-vessel Casting Industry and Regional Center of the Huai River Valley during the Shang (ca. 1400–1200 BC)”
Speaker: Xiaolin He, Wuhan University
“The Wind that Shakes the Barley: Consequences of the Food Globalization in Prehistory”
Speaker: Xinyi Liu,Washington University in St. Louis
“Rewriting Early Chinese Technical Literature for the Age of Empire”
Speaker: Ethan Harkness, New York University
“Approaching Chinese Shamanism through a Comparative Context, With Assistance from the Early Chinese Song Cycle called 'The Nine Songs'”
Speaker: Thomas Michael, Beijing Normal University
“State and Environment in China's First Empire: A Political Ecology of Qin”
Speaker: Brian Lander, Brown University
“Routes of Communication between Erlitou Culture and the Southern Region in Bronze Age China”
Speaker: Pang Xiaoxia, Tang Center for Early China; Institute of Archaeology, CASS
“New Discoveries at Taosi and the Study of State Formation in Early China”
Speaker: Gao Jiangtao, Institute of Archaeology CASS
“‘Classical Chinese’ and its Discontents: What, if anything, was yăyán 雅言 ('refined language')?”
Speaker: Wolfgang Behr, University of Zürich
“The Vulnerability of Integrity in Early Confucian Thought”
Speaker: Michael Ing, Indiana University
“Researching the Cultural History of Xiangyang through Archaeological Remains”
Speaker: Glenda Chao, Ursinus College
“Divination and the Body in Ancient China”
Speaker: Constance A. Cook, Lehigh University
“On the Creation of the Warring States: An Exploration of a Historiographical Staple”
Speaker: Miranda Brown, University of Michigan
“Technological Changes on the Proto-Silk Roads: The Tao River Archaeology Project, Gansu, China”
Speaker: Rowan Flad, Harvard University
“Notes on the Note (ji 記) in Early Chinese Manuscripts: Between Administration and Affect”
Speaker: Luke Habberstad, University of Oregon
“How Classical Chinese Grammar Looked to Its First Native Students”
Speaker: David Prager Branner, independent scholar
“Communities and Practice in Early China – Social Action in the Zhou World”
Speaker: Yitzchak Jaffe, ISAW, NYU

“Reading Shi Ji without the Biographical Fallacy”
Speaker: Yang Lei, Carleton College

“Fleshing out the Social Identity of Human Sacrificial Victims in Late Shang, China”
Speaker: Daniela Wolin, Yale University
“Early Chinese Medical Literature before the Huangdi 黃帝 Classic: New Manuscripts from Laoguanshan 老官⼭ Tomb 3, Sichuan”
Speaker: Donald Harper, University of Chicago
“Gender and Economic Productivity in Han China”
Speaker: Tamara Chin, Brown University
“Who is the Barbarian in Zuozhuan?”
Speaker: Wai-yee Li, Harvard University
“Beyond the Five Colors: Reconsidering Purple and its Sources in Ancient China.”
Speaker: Allison Miller, Southwestern University
“The Emergence and Development of Mechanical Duplication Technique in the Casting of Ancient Chinese Bronze Inscriptions”
Speaker: SAKIKAWA Takashi, Jilin University
“Understanding Xunzi and Zhuangzi through Hui Shi”
Speaker: Annping Chin, Yale University
“Investigating the Anyang Bone Industries: Technologies, Standardization, and the Missing Royal Workshop”
Speaker: Yung-Ti Li, University of Chicago
“The Anthropocene Is A Process Not An Event: China from the Late Neolithic to the Song Dynasty”
Speaker: Tristram Kidder, Washington University in St. Louis
“Xiaoyao and shuchi : Some Special Uses of Alliterative and Rhyming Binomes in the Transmitted and Excavated Documents”
Speaker: Chen Zhi, Hong Kong Baptist University
“The First Emperor’s Mausoleum: New Discoveries and New Interpretations”
Speaker: Cao Wei, Shaanxi University, China
“Picturing Political Abstractions in Han China”
Speaker: Martin Powers, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
“Idlers on the Southwest Frontier: Native Continuities or Evasions of Han Imperial Time”
Speaker: Alice Yao, University of Chicago
“The History of the State of Zeng through New Archeological Discoveries”
Speaker: Fang Qin, Hubei Provincial Museum and Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology
“Dependency vs. Vulnerability in Early China-Steppe Interaction: New Data for Old Problems”
Speaker: Nicola Di Cosmo, Institute for Advanced Study
“Urban Neighborhoods: Social and Spatial Organization of the Great Shang Settlement”
Speaker: Jing Zhichun, University of British Columbia
“Rethinking ritual and the excavation of special deposits at Shang sites”
Speaker: Katrinka Reinhart, San Francisco State University
“Recent Discoveries on Old Chinese and Pre-Qín Documents”
Speaker: William H. Baxter, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
“Excavated Legal Cases from Ancient China and Egypt”
Speaker: Professor Anthony Barbieri-Low, University of California, Santa Barbara
2014 – 2015 Academic Year
Speaker: Chen Jianing 陈家宁, Visiting Scholar, EALC, University of Pennsylvania
Date: May 8, 2015
Presentation: “The Evolution of Xiwangmu (Queen Mother of the West) and Dongwanggong (King Father of the East) in Archaeological Records” 西王母、東王公源流考——以先秦兩漢考古資料為中心
Speaker: Mark Csikszentmihalyi, University of California, Berkeley
Date: April 3, 2015
Presentation: “Crooked and licentious cults: Han popular movements seen through religion’s double lens”
Speaker: Vincent Leung, ISAW, NYU (2014 – 2015); University of Pittsburgh
Date: March 6, 2015
Presentation: “Why History Mattered? On the Politics of the Past in Early China”
Speaker: Gopal Sukhu, Queens College and Columbia University
Date: February 6, 2015
Presentation: “Translating the Tian wen: Where is the Irony?”
Speaker: Guolong, Lai, Institute for Advanced Study (2014 – 15); University of Florida
Date: December 5, 2014
Presentation: “ ’Rabbit (Tu) and ‘Rat’ (Shu) in Chu Manuscripts: The Contact and Impact of the Linguistic Substratum on Old Chinese”
Speaker: Jessica Rawson, Oxford University
Date: November 7, 2014
Presentation: “Why did the Chinese make Bronze Ritual Vessels: Origins and Outcomes”
Speaker(s): Chen Wei 陳偉, Wuhan University; Yang Hua 楊華, Wuhan University; Li Tianhong 李天虹, Wuhan University
Date: October 27, 2014
Presentations:
- Chen Wei: “秦簡牘所見的文書制度”
- Yang Hua: “上古中國的‘夜禱’:兼談原始巫術與儒家禮儀的關係”
- Li Tianhong: “文峰塔一號墓曾侯 編鐘的發現及其初步研究”
Speaker: Ken Brashier, Reed College
Date: October 3, 2014
Presentation: “Wen, Wu, and me, too: A hypothesis on public memory construction in early China”