This book challenges an assumption at the heart of contemporary theoretical debates: that it is impossible to reason through history. Steele believes that two influential schools of contemporary thought “hide from history”: liberal philosophies of public reason as espoused by such figures as Jürgen Habermas, John Rawls and Martha Nussbaum and stru…[Read more]

Responding to the title of the seminar, “Nordic Art Education in Motion,” and to its theme, “Digital competences and computational thinking: preparing children, young people and adults for a digitalized society,” I discuss the “archaic identity of change” (to draw from Etel Adnan) present in calls for motion and preparation. I conceptualize art…[Read more]

On scholarly traditions, quantitative assessments, and academic malpractices in Italy – and how someone disagreed (Isis, Vol. 110, n. S1, pp. 15-17 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/707594)

This real-life memoir chronicles the journey of Arousiag Magarian over a four year period as she struggles to survive during the Armenian Genocide (1915-1919). Originally written in a small notebook in Armenian, the authors (Arpi Poladian and Troy E. Spier) have translated and prepared for the reader a version in literary English that hopes to…[Read more]

In this essay, I examine two widely divergent instances of what I understand to be a compulsive and racialized-sexualized violence against women whose bodies have been figured as “foreign”/Eastern (and even, as animal and barbaric) threats within collective national bodies: the real case of a massacre in the modern state of Gujarat in southwestern…[Read more]

In Historians of Brazil, Francisco Iglésias reviews some of the great names in Brazilian historiography as divided by him into three distinct moments: up to 1838, from 1838 to 1931, and from 1931 onwards. This article shall focus on the third of these moments, which has traditionally been considered the moment of the “modern Brazilian hi…[Read more]

A literary and historical introduction to the printed and manuscript materials composing the Great Peace (Taiping 太平) textual corpus, with a critical assessment of several modern Chinese editions thereof, followed by a revised review of THE SCRIPTURE ON GREAT PEACE: THE TAIPING JING AND THE BEGINNINGS OF DAOISM, translated by Barbara Hen…[Read more]

Review of “L’itinéraire de Marco Polo dans sa traversée de la Chine”, by Philippe Ménard (MEDIOEVO ROMANZO, vol. 26 [3rd Series, vol. 7], fasc. 3 [2002]: 321–360).

Historiography, morphological analysis, textual study and full translation into French of Chinese manuscript Stein no. 4226 from Dunhuang in the British Library (Or.8210/S.4226/R.1).

A state-of-the-art study of popular movements and religiosity in Late Antiquity China (1st–2nd cent. CE), focused on issues of theology, practice, sources and terminology, and including a critical assessment of received scholarship.

Review of MAKING TRANSCENDENTS: ASCETICS AND SOCIAL MEMORY IN EARLY MEDIEVAL CHINA. By Robert Ford Campany. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2009. Pp. xviii + 300.

Review of THE CHENWEI RIDDLE: TIME, STARS, AND HEROES IN THE APOCRYPHA. By Licia Di Giacinto. (Deutsche Ostasienstudien, vol. 13). Gossenberg: Ostasien Verlag, 2013. Pp. xi + 332. 25 Figures, 40 Tables, 4 Appendices, List of Illustrations, Bibliography.

Review of AFFILIATION AND TRANSMISSION IN DAOISM: A BERLIN SYMPOSIUM. Edited by Florian C. Reiter. (Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, vol. 78). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2012. Pp. viii + 300 pages.

Review of THE EMERGENCE OF DAOISM: CREATION OF TRADITION. By Gil Raz. (Routledge Studies in Taoism). Abingdon, New York: Routledge, 2012. Pp. 292.

Review of CELESTIAL MASTERS: HISTORY AND RITUAL IN EARLY DAOIST COMMUNITIES. By Terry F. Kleeman. (Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series, 102). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2016. Pp. xiii + 425. Maps, illustrations.

A review of THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF WORLD RELIGIONS: DAOISM. Edited by James Robson. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2015. Pp. xxxii + 754 + A29. Map, illustrations.

In ancient China, portentology was a “science” in its own right, a specialised field of knowledge developed by rational individuals who endeavoured to fathom the concealed mechanisms at work beneath the spectacles of history and the world at large. This paper focuses on the nomenclature of portents (observed phenomena interpreted as auspicious or…[Read more]

Official Chinese historiography is a treasure trove of information on local resistance to the centralised empire in early medieval China (third to sixth century). Sinologists specialised in the study of Chinese religions commonly reconstruct the religious history of the era by interpreting some of these data. In the process, however, the primary…[Read more]