Lucas Bender
I am a scholar of Chinese literature and thought, specializing in the medieval period, from roughly 200 CE through 1100. Elite writing in this period did not respect our modern, originally Western academic distinctions of “literature,” “philosophy,” “religion,” and “political thought,” and what survives also diverges from the later Chinese lenses through which it has been transmitted to us. For these reasons, I leverage medieval “philosophical” sources to improve our reading of the period’s literature and and “literary” sources to augment our histories of Chinese thought.
I have written books on the great medieval poet Du Fu 杜甫 (712–770) and on the political thought found in medieval “frontier poetry” (biansai shi 邊塞詩); I am currently writing another book detailing the entanglement of medieval xuanxue 玄學 (“dark learning”) with Buddhism. Throughout much of my work, I explore the positive conclusions medieval Chinese thinkers drew from acknowledging that there is much we cannot know. I am interested in how this medieval Chinese tolerance for obscurity eventually gave way to a more optimistic account of our capacity for knowledge.
I teach courses on Chinese literature from the Han dynasty through the Song, Chinese philosophy, and comparative topics.
Office Hours: 11:00 AM-12:30 PM. Students can sign up at https://calendly.com/luke-bender.
