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]

The story of Lough Derg in Ireland’s County Donegal is arranged around clusters of sectarian narratives in juxtaposition, synthesis and conflict. The Sanctuary of Saint Patrick sits on Station Island, a small rocky islet set within the waters of the lake. The site became well known in the early Middle Ages as the place of Saint Patrick’s del…[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]

Germany today is experiencing the strongest upsurge of right-wing populism since the second world war, most notably with the rise of Pegida and Alternative für Deutschland. Yet wealthy global cities like Hamburg continue to present themselves as the gatekeepers of liberal progress and cosmopolitan openness. This article argues that Hamburg’s ur…[Read more]

This conference paper explores ghost signs: the faded adverts for brands, organisations and services that we see inked or carved on walls or above shops. I discuss: 1. the liminality of ghosts and ghosts signs – and the ways we materially engage with them 2. how they flex time and, in doing so, gift us an organisational warning 3. and how, as m…[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]

By way of the autobiographical writings of Bruno Schulz and the “resurrection” paintings of Stanley Spencer, this talk sketches out some of the ways in which literature and the fine arts situate themselves within the division, or series of breaks, that Michel de Certeau argued Western historiography inscribes between past and present, between the…[Read more]

“Buddho-Taoism” is a neologism that appeared in Western academic discourse during the late nineteen-forties, was put to various uses without being consensually defined, enjoyed a brief vogue around the turn of the twenty-first century, and began to fall from grace in recent years. This neologism implicitly created new epistemic repertoires der…[Read more]

This week the Indonesian presidential election has been a contest between the incumbent Jokowi, who has promised an ambitious programme of agrarian reform, and the descendent of the military dictator Suharto. In this article, Frans Ari Prasetyo exposes the contradictions of the Jokowi government’s dependence on the World Bank and local c…[Read more]