This talk examines Ban Gu’s representation of the Western Regions in the History of Western Han. Exploring how the historian presents the center and the border, we will observe the traditional conception of political space in early China, and see how that view affected the Han imperial strategy in forming allies and fighting rivals in the Western Regions.
About the Speaker
Zhang Hanmo is Professor of Chinese Classics at Renmin University of China (RUC). He received his Ph. D. from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2012. He taught at UCLA, and the State University of New York at New Paltz from 2012 to 2016. He has broad interest in early Chinese history, literature, and philosophy. He is author of Authorship and Text-making in Early China (Mouton: De Gruyter, 2018), “The World Floating in the Clouds: Reinterpretation of the Mawangdui Maps in Their Art and Religious Contexts” (Artibus Asiae 76.2(2016), 147-196), “The Lore of Liu An and the Authorship of the Huainanzi” (Monumenta Serica 64.2(2016), 333-359), and a number of other articles. His ongoing projects focus on archeologically excavated manuscripts of early imperial China.
Professor Zhang's lecture is part of a University Seminar course taught by Liang Cai, assistant professor of History and a Faculty Fellow of the Liu Institute