Dr Noga Ganany
- University Associate Professor in the Study of Late Imperial China
Contact
About
I am a scholar of the humanities specializing in the cultural history of late imperial China. My main fields of research are Chinese literature, religious practice in China, and history of the book during the Ming and Qing dynasties (ca. 1400-1900). I am particularly interested in the interplay between writing and worship in late Ming book culture, as well as the impact of hagiographic writing on pilgrimage and travel.
Before joining AMES in 2019, I received my PhD from Columbia University in New York City (2018) and taught courses on China at Boston University as a Visiting Assistant Professor.
Research
Research interests
- Chinese history
- Premodern Chinese literature
- Religious practice in China
- Print culture and history of the book
- Travel and pilgrimage
- And popular culture. I am particularly interested in the interplay between literature and religion in late-imperial China (primarily during the Ming and Qing dynasties). I am also interested in the history of the book
- Popular culture
- And religious practice.
My first book, Origin Narratives: Hagiographic Writing and Cultic Reverence in Ming Book Culture, examines a subgenre of popular illustrated books celebrating the lives of heroes, gods, and immortals. Through the prism of these books, which I refer to as “origin narratives,” I explore of the interplay between narrative writing and cultic reverence during the “print revolution” of the Ming dynasty. Targeting a wide audience, origin narratives offered entertaining portfolios of cultural icons that weave their lives, iconographies, sacred geographies, and cultic traditions into the fabric of entertaining xiaoshuo. I argue that origin narratives are closely connected to ritual practice and cultic worship of the protagonists, highlighting the multifunctionality of commercially published books as bridging the realms of “literature” and “religion.” Deeply rooted in ritual practice and indebted to earlier texts, origin narratives are hybrid works that reveal commercial publishers' attempts to meet the readerships' changing horizon of expectations. My book furthermore argues that the origin narratives vogue represents the culmination of two parallel shifts in Ming culture: the maturation of the long xiaoshuo mode of narration, and the emergence of a Chinese hagiographic vision which paints revered figures as spiritually perfected miracle makers.
My second book project, King Yama: Afterlife Justice and the Chinese Netherworld, currently in its early stages of preparation, examines the conceptualization of death and the afterlife in Chinese popular culture. The main focus of this project is King Yama (yanluowang 閻羅王), a central figure in religio-cultural practices surrounding death and a recurring trope in Ming-Qing literature and drama.
I organize two lecture series at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Cambridge:
1. "Book Culture in Buddhism and Beyond," sponsored by the Glorisun Global Buddhist Network.
2. "Yin-Cheng Distinguished Lecture Series on Buddhism," sponsored by the Tzu Chi Foundation.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Articles:
- “The Origins of Buddhism (Shishi yuanliu) and Illustrated Hagiographic Narratives in Ming China,” Journal of Chinese Religions 53, no. 2 (Dec 2025): 213-246
- “Popular Reverence and Commercial Publishing in Late Ming Hagiographic Literature,”
Hualin International Journal of Buddhist Studies 6, no. 2 (2023): 18–29 - “Writing and Worship in Deng Zhimo's Saints Trilogy,” Religions 13, no. 128 (January 2022): 1-22
- “Journeys Through the Netherworld in Late Ming Hagiographic Narratives,” Late Imperial China 42, no. 2 (December 2021): 137-178
- “Jigong.” In Jonathan A. Silk, Richard Bowring, Vincent Eltschinger, and Michael Radich eds. Brill's Encyclopedia of Buddhism, Vol II: Lives (Leiden: Brill, 2019): 679-683
- “Baogong as King Yama in the Literature and Religious Worship of Late-Imperial China,” Asia Major, Third Series 28, no. 2 (Fall 2015): 39-75
Book Chapters:
- “Illustrated Buddhist Literature.” In Natasha Heller and Vanessa R. Sasson eds., The Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Literature [Oxford University Press, forthcoming]
- “The Zha.” In Adam Yuet Chau ed., Chinese Religious Culture in 100 Objects [Oxford University Press, forthcoming]
- “Religion and Thought.” In Paul Vierthaler ed., A Cultural History of Chinese Literatures, Volume 4: the Age of Expansion (1400-1650) [Bloomsbury, forthcoming]
Reviews:
- Shih-shan Susan Huang, The Dynamic Spread of Buddhist Print Culture: Mapping Buddhist Book Roads in China and its Neighbors (Brill, 2025) [forthcoming in Ming Studies]
- Master of Silent Whistle Studio, Further Adventures on the Journey to the West. Translated by Qiancheng Li and Robert E. Hegel (University of Washington Press, 2020), Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 84, no. 2 (June 2021): 412-413
- Barend J. Ter Haar. Guan Yu: The Religious Afterlife of a Failed Hero (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), Journal of Chinese Religions 46, no. 2 (2018): 219-221
- “Theater, Life, and the Afterlife: Tomb Décor of the Jin Dynasty from Shanxi,” at the China Institute, New York (February 9 - June 17, 2012), CHINOPERL 31, no. 1 (2012): 207-210
Teaching and supervision
I teach undergraduate and postgraduate papers on Chinese history, culture, literature, and religion, as well as Classical Chinese.
I welcome proposals for graduate work in the areas of late imperial Chinese literature, book culture, and Chinese religions.