Lucas Bender

Lucas Bender's picture
Associate Professor Term of East Asian Languages and Literatures
Address: 
320 York Street, Humanities Quadrangle, Room 111, New Haven, CT 06511
+1 203-432-5823

I am a scholar of Chinese literature and thought, specializing in the period from roughly 200 CE through 1100. 

My current work centers on the positive conclusions we can draw from the vast amount we don’t know. This theme is at the core of my first book, on the poet Du Fu 杜甫 (712–770), and it is also pertinent to my second project, on the much-remarked “pluralism” of medieval China. I am interested in understanding how the medieval Chinese tolerance for obscurity eventually gave way to a more optimistic account of our capacity for knowledge, and whether that more optimistic account may sometimes have been linked to a decreased interest in difference and diversity. 

I teach courses on Chinese literature from the Han dynasty through the Song, Chinese philosophy, and comparative topics.

Office hours:

Tuesday 2:00pm – 4:00pm 

https://calendly.com/luke-bender (Yale affiliates only, please)

 

Publications