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 beings known as xian 仙. In this talk I will explore what it can tell us about the origins and early history of the quest for transcendence. What range of methods does it portray adepts as using to gain extraordinary longevity and other transhuman capabilities? How do its entries depict practitioners’ relations with other people, with local communities, and with the landscape? What does the text reveal about the sometimes strange workings of the hagiographic process? (For example, why do the “wandering women” 游女 mentioned in the Shijing 詩經 poem “The Han is Broad” [“Han guang 漢廣,” Mao #9] number among its transcendents?) To what extent does the text hold surprises when read against Ge Hong’s 葛洪 similar but much larger compilation made three centuries later?

Rob Campany is Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in Humanities and Professor of Asian Studies at Vanderbilt University. He researches the history of religion in China from the late Warring States to the Tang. His most recent books include The Chinese Dreamscape, 300 BCE – 800 CE (Harvard University Asia Center Publications, 2020), winner of the Joseph Levenson Prize and the Médaille Stanislas Julien, and Dreaming and Self-Cultivation in China, 300 BCE – 800 CE (Harvard University Asia Center Publications, 2023).