Ph.D. University of Michigan
Curriculum Vitae (requires Chinese/Japanese fonts)
Foundation Professor of Chinese, joint appointment with Department of Languages and Literatures. Formerly Louis Agassiz Professor of Chinese, East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of California, Berkeley.
My original research interests are in Chinese performance literature and cultural history of the 11 th-14 th century. While these may not seem particularly “global” in nature, in fact many of the features considered to be marks of modernity appear in Chinese society at this time as features of a society undergoing rapid urbanization, an explosion of print media, and a rapid change in the nature of its governing class. My work has centered on texts from popular culture. My languages are Mandarin dialect of Chinese, classical Chinese, and German. I have a reading knowledge of French and Spanish. I have lived and done extensive archival and field work in China and Taiwan.
I currently have several research interests. The first is on the city of Kaifeng, which was the capital of Song China from 960-1125. This metropolis had a population of approximately 1.1 million people. It was the first capital to have been created by practical political and economic forces rather than formalistic city planning, and as such, it became the prototype of the modern Chinese city that we still see in places like Beijing and Taipei. I am completing a translation and study of a personal memoir written about the capital in 1145 and published in 1187. A distinct part of this project is about violence and terror of everyday life in medieval China. This project sprang from the work on Kaifeng and a later capital, Hangzhou. Investigating daily-life encyclopedia published in the 13 th and 14 th centuries, I have discovered a great deal of writing about the vicissitudes of living in cities: strategies for living outside of extended family networks of security, for protection from home invasions, child-kidnapping, for avoidance of suits in court, as well as “fill-in forms” for depositions about lost property, runaway servants and children, and settling property claims. These texts give this period a distinctly modern feel. Current research results from this project have been published in English, Chinese, and Japanese. The latest paper, “Deconstructing History: Huizong in the Afterglow, Or The Deaths of a Troubling Emperor,” will appear in an edited volume from Harvard East Asia Council Press. A third research area is drama and dramatic commentary of the 14 th-16 th century. The latest paper, “The ‘Peony Pavilion of the Talents’ Commentary on ‘The Story of the Western Wing’,” a study of an erotic commentary to China’s most popular love drama, will be published in Chinese and English by Academia Sinica in Taipei. A final area of interest is Chinese gardens. I currently serve as a Senior Fellow of Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks, and have an article that will appear shortly in a Dumbarton Oaks Symposium volume, The Social Reception of Baroque Gardens, entitled “Spectacle, Ritual, and Social Relations: Imperial Gardens of the Northern Song.”
Contact by email: stephen.h.west@asu.edu