Yang Lu

Contact Information Phone: (785) 864-9445 Office: 3621 Wescoe Hall Email: yanglu@ku.edu

Asst. Prof. (Ph.D., 1999, Princeton) Chinese history

The focuses of my research and teaching are mainly society and
culture of pre-modern China. My areas of specialty range from history
of Sui-Tang Dynasties, social and cultural history of Chinese
Buddhism, history of and religions associated with the Silk Road,
history of Chinese historiography, to intellectual history of modern
and contemporary China.

I began my intellectual quest studying Sanskrit and Indian Buddhism
in Peking University and University of Vienna. I taught for several
years as an assistant professor of Chinese history at Princeton
University after I received my Ph.D. there. I also was a visiting
professor at Harvard University during the 2006-7 academic year. I
recently finished my first book, which is entitled “Emperor and His
Enemy in Tang China: A Study of Xianzong and His Age.” It explores
the complex nature of political and institutional changes in the
ninth century and their impact on the imperial system of later
dynasties.

My current research concentrates on two projects. One is the called
“Knowledge, Network, and Authority in Medieval Chinese Buddhism.” It
is a monographic study focusing on the models of Chinese Buddhist
learning that evolved between the 4th and the 10th centuries and the
network of monastic institutions that supported such models. It also
addresses the broader implications this development had on Chinese
society and its complex relationship with other scholastic traditions
that were prominent in medieval China. My second research project
deals with the social and cultural imagination of writing and with
the relationship between such imagination and the rise of literati-
aristocratic families in late medieval China. Based on extensive
research on literary works and epigraphic materials, I attempt to
reconstruct the cultural psychology and the institutional mechanism
that shaped the socio-political elite of late Tang and early Song.

When I teach, I place pre-modern Chinese history in the context of
world history. I am currently designing a course on the Silk Road, in
which I will examine with my students, the early history of Chinese
contacts with the western world through the Inner and Central Asia.
In my spare time, I enjoy visiting museums, taking photographs,
updating my blog (that I keep in Chinese), and writing essays on
culture and history for major Chinese and Taiwanese newspapers and
magazines.