- Ph.D. Candidate, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Years of Affiliation: Graduate Student Associate from 2019-2021
Yung-chang’s dissertation is entitled “Coping with Triviality: Note-Taking, Gossip-Telling, and the Problem of Information in Song China (960-1276).” This project tackles the ways in which Chinese literati processed daily information and promoted their reputation. He focuses particularly on Song notebooks (biji), arguing that literati developed multiple strategies to counter the problem of triviality and unreliability in notebook genre in order to accumulate their social capital in an increasingly competitive society.
Research Interests: Song Dynasty History, Biji, Book History, the Formation of an Information Society in Middle-Period China