A Digital Archive for Chinese Local History

James Robson and Michael Szonyi will speak at Harvard University.

Professor Robson specializes in the history of Medieval Chinese Buddhism and Daoism and is particularly interested in issues of sacred geography, local religious history, talismans, religious art, and the historical development of Chan/Zen Buddhism. He is the author of Power of Place: The Religious Landscape of the Southern Sacred Peak (Nanyue 南嶽) in Medieval China (Harvard University Asia Center, East Asia Monograph Series [Harvard University Press] 2009), which received the Stanislas Julien Prize for 2010 by the French Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres [Prix Stanislas Julien by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (Institut de France)]. He is also the co-editor of Buddhist Monasticism in East Asia: Places of Practice (London: Routledge, 2010). His publications include: "Signs of Power: Talismanic Writing in Chinese Buddhism" (in History of Religions 2008), "Buddhism and the Chinese Marchmount System [Wuyue]: A Case Study of the Southern Marchmount (Mt. Nanyue)," "A Tang Dynasty Chan Mummy [roushen] and a Modern Case of Furta Sacra? Investigating the Contested Bones of Shitou Xiqian," "Faith in Museums: On the Confluence of Museums and Religious Sites in Asia" (PMLA, 2010), and "Buddhist Sacred Geography in China". He is presently engaged in a long-term collaborative research project with the École Française d’Extrême-Orient studying a large collection of local religious statuary from Hunan province.

Michael Szonyi received his BA from the University of Toronto and his D.Phil from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He has also studied at National Taiwan University and Xiamen University. Prior to coming to Harvard in 2005, Prof. Szonyi taught at McGill University and University of Toronto. His main research interests are the local history of southeast China, especially in the Ming dynasty; the history of Chinese popular religion, and Overseas Chinese history. His most recent book is Cold War Island: Quemoy on the Front Line, published in 2008.