My research focuses on the cultural and religious history of early China. I work largely with paleographical materials, such as inscribed bronze vessels and bamboo manuscripts, and take a special interest in “alternate histories” and other texts that didn’t make it into the classical canon.
To date, my work has concentrated on the Western Zhou era (ca. 11th-8th c. BCE), a time of sage kings and culture heroes. My current monograph project, entitled Bound by Bronze: Ritual and Kingship in Western Zhou China, explores the royal ritual of that period based on contemporary bronze inscriptions. Recently, I have begun a second line of research on the ideological, literary, and aesthetic concerns behind later tales of Western Zhou history in sources ranging from ancient manuscripts to modern science fiction.
Research interests:
- Early Chinese history
- Archaeology of religion
- Ritual studies
- Kingship in comparative perspective
- Inscriptions and manuscripts
- Historiography as literature
- Ancient history in popular media.
