Speaker: Tamara Chin, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Brown University The study of ancient language contact traditionally lacked prestige in both Confucian classical studies and European philology.  This changed somewhat in the early twentieth century.  The discovery of multilingual manuscript archives in and around Dunhuang coincided with the internationalization of Western-style linguistics, prompting both scientific and political interest […]

Topics: Speaker: Robert Campany, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in Humanities; Professor of Asian Studies, Vanderbilt University Liexian zhuan, plausibly attributed to the late Western Han scholiast and court official Liu Xiang 劉向 (79-8 BCE), is the earliest extant collection of anecdotes about individuals deemed to have transcended the limits of the human condition to become […]