- Phone:
- (812) 856-7002
- Email:
- pnvogt@iu.edu
- Office:
- GA 2044
- Office hours:
- Mondays 2:00-4:00 or by appointment (virtual)
My research focuses on the cultural and religious history of early China. I work largely with paleographical materials, such as inscribed bronze vessels and bamboo manuscripts, and take a special interest in “alternate histories” and other texts that didn’t make it into the classical canon.
To date, my work has concentrated on the Western Zhou era (ca. 11th-8th c. BCE), a time of sage kings and culture heroes. My current monograph project, entitled Bound by Bronze: Ritual and Kingship in Western Zhou China, explores the royal ritual of that period based on contemporary bronze inscriptions. Recently, I have begun a second line of research on the ideological, literary, and aesthetic concerns behind later tales of Western Zhou history in sources ranging from ancient manuscripts to modern science fiction.
I offer a broad range of courses on early China and pre-modern East Asia in general, including studies in the classical Chinese language.
I joined the EALC faculty in 2016 after four years at the Institute for Sinology, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Germany.
Research interests:
Early Chinese history
Archaeology of religion
Ritual studies
Kingship in comparative perspective
Inscriptions and manuscripts
Historiography as literature
Ancient history in popular media
Education:
- M.A./M.Phil./Ph.D., Columbia University
- East Asian Languages and Cultures (History-East Asia)
- B.A., Dartmouth College
Recent and Upcoming Courses:
Facing and Fleeing Death in Early China (E351/E505)
China: The Age of Glory (E350/HIST-G382)
Traditional East Asian Civilizations (E251)
War and Violence in East Asia (E111)
Introduction to East Asian Studies (E310)
China's Past in Speculative Fiction (E202)
Recent Publications:
“Western Zhou Government and Society.” In The Oxford Handbook of Early China, ed. Elizabeth Childs-Johnson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.
“Consumption, Knowledge, and the Limits of the Body in the Xiaochen Texts.” In Qinghua jian yanjiu, vol. 3 (Dec. 2019), 237-260.
“The One Text in the Many: Separate and Composite Readings of an Early Chinese Historical Manuscript” (co-authored with Rens Krijgsman). Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 82.3 (2019), 473-492.