China

Lu Kou

Lu Kou

Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures

Office: 412 Kent Hall
Office Hours: T 3-5 PM, appointment required
Phone:
Email: lk2950@columbia.edu

Educational Background

BA: Peking University (2010)
MA: Harvard University (2012)
PhD: Harvard University (2018)

Classes Taught

EAAS UN3935 The Fantastic in Pre-Modern China
EAAS GU4031 History of Chinese Literature

Research Interests

As a medievalist and a scholar of premodern Chinese literature, Lu Kou’s research interests include medieval Chinese literature and culture, poetry and poetics, historiography, and comparative studies of China’s Middle Period and medieval Europe. He is currently at work on two book projects: War of Words: Courtly Exchange, Rhetoric, and Political Culture in Early Medieval China, which examines the “discursive battles” fought among rival states in China’s early medieval period and investigates how rhetoric constructed and contested political legitimacy in this age of multipolarity; and (tentatively titled) Locked Seal, Heart of Poetry: Bureaucracy and the Representation of Work in Medieval Chinese Poetry, 400-900 CE, which studies the dialectic between poetry and bureaucratic systems, between the lyrical and quotidian renderings of “work” in medieval poetry. Before joining the faculty at Columbia, he was Assistant Professor of Chinese at Bard College (2019-2022) and Visiting Assistant Professor at Williams College (2018-2019).

Selected Publications

“The Poetics and Politics of Space: Writing Imperial Visits of Private Estates in Early Tang Court Poetry.” The Nanyang Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture. 2023. Special issue on “court culture.”

“Audible Empire: Musical Orthodoxy and Spectacle in the Sui Dynasty.” Early Medieval China, vol. 28 (2022): pp. 73-96.

“Epistolary Exchange and Psychological Warfare: Tuoba Tao’s 拓跋燾 (408–452, r. 423–452) Letters to his Southern Audience.” Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture, 7.1 (2020): pp. 34-59.

[Chinese version:] “Shuxin zhong de junwang xingxiang yu xinli zhan: Tuoba Tao (408–452, r. 423–452) de guoshu he ta de nanfang duzhe” 書信中的君王形象與心理戰：拓跋燾（408–452）的國書和他的南方讀者. Lingnan xuebao 嶺南學報, 13 (2020): pp. 51-72.

Qingzhu Wang

Qingzhu Wang

Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and the Tang Center for Early China

Email: qw2375@columbia.edu

Office: TBD

Office Hours: By appointment

Educational Background

BA/MA: Shandong University

PhD: Yale University

Classes Taught

Archaeometallurgy in Ancient China (2021 Fall)

Introduction to East Asian Civilization: China (2022 Spring)

Research Interests

Origin and development of complex societies and early states in China; Archaeometallurgy and bronze production; Political economy of ancient states; Cultural contacts and social changes; Iconography and inscriptions on bronze objects; Archaeomagnetic dating (focus on China); The history of antiquarianism and archaeology in China

Biography

As an archaeologist and archaeometallurgist, Qingzhu Wang studies bronze objects and metallurgical remains to investigate the process and nature of bronze production in early states. Funded by the National Science Foundation (2018), his dissertation research focuses on the role of bronze production, distribution, and consumption in the Shang (ca. 1600-1050 BCE) period of Bronze Age China, examining state organization and political economy from a regional perspective. In his dissertation, he used a multi-proxy research approach, including analyses of bronze objects for their styles, inscriptions, casting methods, chemical compositions, and lead isotope ratios. He also conducted scientific analyses of metallurgical remains related to bronze production. His research revealed significant changes in bronze production and circulation during different periods of the Shang state, providing a new understanding of the operation and development of the Shang state. He has participated in excavations and research projects in China, the Andes, and Africa. His postdoctoral project at Columbia will place bronze consumption in the larger framework of colonialism to investigate how Shang elites in the capitals attempted to integrate Shandong into the state order.

Benjamin Kindler

Benjamin Kindler

Joseph E Hotung Fellow at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute
Educational Background
BA: University of Oxford
MPhil: University of Oxford
PhD: Columbia University

Classes Taught

UN3435 Chinese Revolution, Asian Revolution, World Revolution

Research Interests
Cultural production under Chinese socialism; intellectual history of Chinese and global Marxisms; working-class writing; humanism and anti-humanism; anti-colonial thought
Benjamin Kindler is a recent graduate of the department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. His doctoral dissertation, entitled ‘Writing to the Rhythm of Labour: The Politics of Cultural Labour in the Chinese Revolution, 1942-1976’ examines the complex interrelations between the formation of the “culture worker” (wenyi gongzuozhe) as the new subject of cultural production under Chinese socialism, and the capacity of varied cultural forms and genres to support the transformation of social relations as part of the movement towards a more egalitarian society. In addition to preparing this dissertation for book publication, Ben is also pursuing a second project on the question of humanism during the socialist and post-socialist periods. It takes up the involvement of Chinese Marxists in the debates that emerged around the question of the human within the international communist movement of the 1960s, as well as the re-emergence of humanism as part of the reassessment of Marx’s early writings during the reform period. Ben’s work has been published or is scheduled for publication in journals such as Modern Chinese Literature and Culture (MCLC), International Quarterly for Asian Studies, and Modern China, as well as in the edited collections The Afterlives of Chinese Communism and Proletarian China. Ben teaches courses on the global history of the Chinese Revolution and the legacies of proletarian literature in East Asia.