Benjamin Elman to Speak at the Institute on the Life of a Confucian Classic
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Benjamin Elman, Gordon Wu ’58 Professor of Chinese Studies at Princeton University, will deliver a public lecture, “Philologists as Rogues? The Life of a Confucian Classic Recovered in Early Modern Japan and Its Transmission Back to Imperial China,” on Friday, November 18, at 4:30 p.m. in West Lecture hall on the Institute campus.
In the 1740s, Japanese Confucians discovered a long lost sub-commentary of Confucius's Analects. After publication in 1750, an imprint was also sent to China, where it had disappeared circa 1200–1250. The commentary provided important information about medieval Chinese classical learning. Its preface recommended a medieval approach to the study of texts, which was surprisingly compatible with the contemporary research movement known as “evidential studies” in both China and Japan. In this talk, Elman will discuss whether this precocious philological insight was more than just adventitious.
The lecture is made possible by the Dr. S.T. Lee Fund for Historical Studies.
A member of both the Department of East Asian Studies and the Department of History at Princeton University, Elman’s teaching and research interests include: Chinese intellectual and cultural history, 1000-1900; the history of science in China, 1600-1930; the history of education in late imperial China; and Sino-Japanese cultural history, 1600-1850. Currently, he is working on a project entitled "The Intellectual Impact of Late Imperial Chinese Classicism, Medicine, and Science in Tokugawa Japan, 1700-1850,” and editing several volumes from conferences held at Princeton under the auspices of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, the East Asian Studies Program, and the Mellon Foundation. Elman obtained his Ph.D. in Oriental Studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1980. He has served on the Faculty of Princeton University since 2002. Elman has received many awards for his work, including the 2011–16 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Distinguished Academic Achievement Award. Earlier, he served as the Mellon Foundation’s Visiting Professor in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute from 1999 to 2001.
The event is free and open to the public. To register for this lecture, visit www.ias.edu/events/st-lee-public-lecture. For more information on other events at the Institute, visit www.ias.edu/events.
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