• Region: China
• Time Periods: 16th century; 17th century; 18th century
• Themes: late imperial Chinese literature; visual and material cultures

I am a scholar of Chinese literature with related research interests in the history of writing, material culture, and pre-modern media studies. My first book, The Inscription of Things: Writing and Materiality in Early Modern China (Columbia UP, 2023), develops a new account of the relationship between literature and material culture by examining inscribed objects from the Ming and Qing periods. The book argues that the act of inscribing an object became a means for writers to grapple with the materiality and technologies of writing.  
    I am currently working on two new projects. The first, tentatively entitled The Unfinished Book, c. 1644, investigates the relationship between a poetics of incompletion and manuscript culture during the Ming-Qing dynastic transition. I provide a brief introduction to this project here. The second is a critical study of performance theory in early modern China based upon the life and essays of the drama critic Pan Zhiheng (1566–1622). I maintain wide-ranging research and teaching interests in late imperial drama, fiction, poetry, and prose. For an up-to-date list of recent publications, please see my website.  
     I received my PhD from the University of Chicago in 2017 and BA from the University of Oxford in 2009. Before joining Harvard, I was a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows at the University of Michigan. I am currently serving as the President of the Society for Ming Studies.

Selected Publications:

“The Death of an Artisan: Su Shi and Inkmaking,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies (forthcoming).

“Paper Trails: Fang Yongbin (1542–1608) and the Material Culture of Calligraphy,” Journal of Chinese History 中國歷史學刊, 3.2 (July 2019), Special Issue on Material Cultures.

“Putting on a Play in an Underworld Courtroom: the “Mingpan” (Infernal Judgment) Scene in Tang Xianzu’s Mudan ting (Peony Pavilion),” CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature 32.2 (December 2013): 131–155.

Review of Design by the Book: Chinese Ritual Objects and the Sanli tu, by François Louis, East Asian Publishing and Society Vol. 8, Issue 1 (2018): 99–103.