I read Religion at Columbia University before earning a Master of Theological Studies and Ph.D. in comparative religion from Harvard University, with stints studying at Peking University, National Taiwan University, and the University of Hawai‘i-Mānoa. Before coming to Cambridge, I held the positions of Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and Assistant Professor of Comparative Theology and Religion at Boston College. I have served the field of Chinese religions as co-chair of the Daoist Studies Unit of the American Academy of Religion and on the Executive Board of Directors of the Society for the Study of Chinese Religions, as well as book co-editor of the journal Daoism: Religion, History, and Society. I currently serve on the Board of Directors of the Global Daoist Studies Forum, an online platform for sharing research-in-process with scholars of Daoism and Chinese religion worldwide. My research has been funded by grants from the American Philosophical Society, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the Association for Asian Studies.
Research interests:
I am interested in all aspects of Daoist and Buddhist practice from China’s middle period (tenth–fourteenth centuries) to the present day. I am inspired by various theories, methods, and categories developed in the comparative and historical study of religion, especially phenomenology of ritual, performance theory, theories of healing, and theories of materiality, especially as they shed light on the workings of talismans and amulets. I attend to the embeddedness of religious practice in its social and environmental contexts.
To date, my work has largely focused on Daoist ritual practices in China’s middle period and the living remnants of those practices in rural enclaves of present-day south China. My first book, Knotting the Banner: Ritual and Relationship in Daoist Practice (University of Hawai‘i Press, Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2021), was named a finalist for the 2022 Best First Book in the History of Religions by the American Academy of Religion. This book combines text-historical analysis with ethnographic fieldwork to show how rituals designed to summon fierce exorcistic/healing gods performed these days by Daoist priests in south China should be understood in the context of middle-period Daoist debates about ritual efficacy as well as in the context of economic and social pressures on Daoist priests during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The book strives to bring Daoist ritual to life with arresting photography and film included on an accompanying website, which is open access and welcome to be used for teaching purposes. I have also published articles on the ritual workings of talismans, on oath-making and cursing in middle-period Daoist ritual, and on ways in which Daoist priests have creatively redacted their sacred traditions of liturgical practice through the centuries.
I am currently working on two monographs. The first, The Sensuous Dead: Body, Materiality, and Identity in a Daoist Tradition, explores Daoist dealings with the Fengdu underworld from the thirteenth-century on. This book examines how attention to the material quality of practice as described in canonical and non-canonical sources sheds light on how a particular tradition of Daoist priests dedicated to dealing with the Fengdu realm of the dead worked to carve out an identity distinct from masters of other Daoist traditions and from Buddhist monks.
The second monograph, Death of a Master and the Roots of Modern Buddho-Daoist Practice, uses visceral images from a 2018 funeral of an eminent Daoist master in Hunan province as a focal point to explore how the kinds of hybrid Buddhist-Daoist funerary rites common in today’s south China emerged in debates and borrowings between Buddhist monks and Daoist masters during the twelfth through early fifteenth centuries. See the photo essay published in The Washington Post by my photographer-collaborator, Nick Otto.
Together with Dr. Ling Zhang, I am also working on a collaborative project entitled “Ecology, Religion, and Multispecies Healing.”
Selected Articles:
“A Song Pleading against the Slaughter and Consumption of Oxen.” In China’s Environmental History: A Reader, edited by Brian Lander and Peter Lavelle. New York: Columbia University Press, forthcoming.
“Writing Utensils (Brush and Ink).” In Chinese Religious Culture in 100 Objects, edited by Adam Yuet Chau. Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming.
“Oaths and Curses in Divine Empyrean Practice.” Journal of Chinese Religions 48, no. 1 (2020): 31–58.
“Living Redactions: The Salvationist Roots of Daoist Practice in Central Hunan.” Daoism: Religion, History, and Society 11 (2019), 1–61.
“Summoning the Exorcist: The Role of Heart Seals (xinyin 心印) in Calling Down a Demon-Quelling Deity in Contemporary Daoist Thunder Ritual.” In Exorcism in Daoism, edited by Florian C. Reiter, 231–256. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2011.
“Daubing Lips with Blood and Drinking Elixirs with the Celestial Lord Yin Jiao: The Role of Thunder Deities in Daoist Ordination in Contemporary Hunan.” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 19 (2010): 269–303.
A revised reprint appears in Jingdian daojiao yu difang zongjiao 經典道教與地方宗教 [Scriptural Daoism and Local Religion], edited by Hsieh Shu-wei 謝世維, 251–310. Taipei: Zhengda chubanshe, 2014.