Position:

University Lecturer in Chinese Philosophy; Fellow of The Queen's College

Faculty / College Address:

Institute for Chinese Studies / The Queen's College

Email:

dirk.meyer@orinst.ox.ac.uk

Research Interests:

History of thought; interplay of material conditions and ideas; orality and literacy in early Chinese philosophical discourse; excavated manuscripts from early China; early Chinese textuality; transition periods in Philosophy; argumentative strategies in early Chinese Philosophy

Current Projects:

• An Annotated Bibliography on Chinese pre-Qing Scholarship on the Chinese Classic Shangshu. HdO. Leiden: Brill (Contracted) 
• Oxford-Princeton Partnership: The Classic of Documents and the Origins of Chinese Political Philosophy (together with Martin Kern, Princeton). With this four-year partnership, we propose a new approach to one of the core texts of the classical Chinese tradition, the Classic of Documents. For more information on this project, click here.
• A History of Written Thinking in China. This long-term project will address trends in Chinese written philosophical discourse.

Courses Taught:

• Lectures: contributions to East Asian surveys for Undergraduate and Postgraduate courses
• Tutorials: Writing and Philosophy
• Classes: Mengzi; Xunzi; Zhuangzi; Readings in Classical Chinese
• Special Subject (classes, lectures, tutorials): Text and Manuscript Culture in Early China
• Graduate Seminars: contributions to Chinese Studies Research Methods Seminar; Classical Chinese Texts Seminar; Old Chinese Phonology; Archaeology; Theory Readings

Recent Publications:

Book:

• Philosophy on Bamboo: Text and the Production of Meaning in Early China. This book analyses excavated philosophical texts from the Warring States period. It treats texts as objects in their own right and discusses the relationship between the material conditions of text and manuscript culture, writing, techniques of meaning construction and philosophy in the Warring States period (ca. 481-222). (Leiden: Brill), pp. x + 396.

Articles:

• “Texts, Textual Communities, and Meaning: The Genius Loci of the Warring-States Chu-Tomb Guodian One.” Asiatische Studien / Études Asiatiques 63.4 (2009): 827-856
• “Writing Meaning: Strategies of Meaning-construction in Early Chinese Philosophical Discourse.” Monumenta Serica 56 (2008), pp. 55-95.
• Meaning-Construction in Warring States philosophical discourse: A Discussion of the Palaeographic Materials from Tomb Guodian One. Leiden: CNWS, 2008.
• “Structure as a Means of Persuasion as seen in the Manuscript Qiong da yi shi 窮達以時 from Tomb One, Guodian.” Oriens Extremus 45 (2005/06) [2007]: 173-210.
• “Betrachtung einer Bibliothek. Das Grab Nummer Eins zu Guodian.” Castrum Peregrini. Zeitschrift für Literatur und Geisteswissenschaft 271-272 (2006): 107-123.
• “A Device for Conveying Meaning: the Structure of the Guodian Tomb One manuscript “Zhong xin zhi dao.” In Wolfgang Behr and Joachim Gentz (editors).
• Komposition und Konnotation—Figuren der Kunstprosa im Alten China (Bochumer Jahrbuch 29, 2005) [2006]: 57-78.

Forthcoming:

Books:

• Literary Forms of Argument in Pre-Modern China. (Seattle: University of Washington Press). Joachim Gentz (Edinburgh) and I co-edit this monograph. This book is based on a conference that was held in Oxford in 2009. It addresses literary patterns in pre-modern Chinese texts and their philosophical functions. By drawing attention to the philosophical relevance of form and thought in early Chinese writings, it examines the formal characteristics of written argument in pre-modern Chinese philosophy. (For a detailed description of the project, see here).
• Reading Early Chinese Manuscripts: Texts, Contexts, Methods. HdO. (Leiden: Brill). Martin Kern (Princeton), Wolfgang Behr (Zurich), and I co-edit this long overdue handbook. The handbook is conceived as a programmatic statement on how to approach the study of early Chinese manuscripts, as well as a comprehensive and authoritative guide to the tools and methods necessary for such study.

Articles:

• “Bamboo and the Production of Philosophy: A Hypothesis about a Shift in Writing and Thought in Early China.” In: History and Material Culture in Asian Religions (eds. Benjamin J. Fleming and Richard Mann). London: Routledge.
• “Text, Philosophy, and the Rise of a Manuscript Culture in Early China.” In: Reading Early Chinese Manuscripts: Texts, Contexts, Methods (eds. Wolfgang Behr, Martin Kern, Dirk Meyer). HdO. Leiden: Brill.
• “Text and Performance: Reading the “Tai yi sheng shui.” In: Literary Forms of Argument in Pre-Modern China (eds. Joachim Gentz and Dirk Meyer). Seattle: University of Washington.
• “Stolen Memory: A Discussion of Unprovenanced Literary Production.”
• “Why Were Philosophical Texts Copied? An Analysis of the Philosophical Discourse in early China.”

Recent Conference and Workshop Organisation (2008-present):

• Literary Forms of Argument in Pre-modern China. Conference organised at The Queen’s College, University of Oxford, funded by the Chiang-Ching-Kuo (CCK) Foundation, the American Council for Learned Societies (ACLS), the British Inter-university China Centre (BICC) and The Queen’s College. 16-18 September 2009.
• Research Training Old Chinese, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). This workshop series consisted of six workshops held across the UK
  (i) Philosophy & Religion: 29 Jan-2 Feb 2009, Edinburgh (in collaboration with Joachim Gentz)
  (ii) Old Chinese Phonology & Palaeography:25 Aug-3 Sept 2009, Oxford
  (iii) History & Historiography:24-28 March 2010, Cambridge (in collaboration with Mark Strange and Roel Sterckx)
  (iv) Text & Textuality:24-28 June 2010 Oxford
  (v) Art & Archaeololgy:21-24 Sept 2010, London, SOAS (in collaboration with Lukas Nickel)
  (vi) Old Chinese Grammar and Syntax: 9-13 July 2011, Oxford

Further Info:

Collaborative Research Training in Old Chinese:
In 2008, I have secured a £60,000 AHRC Collaborative Research Grant for Research Training in Old Chinese for a two-year series of postgraduate workshops. The idea of this programme was to connect the various UK centres for the study of Old Chinese into a nationwide network to facilitate specialised research-training in Old Chinese phonology, palaeography, grammar and syntax, literature, philosophy, and religion, and strengthen the international visibility of traditional Sinology in the UK at large. Details of the series can be found on the project homepage.

International Workshop-series on Old Chinese Phonology:
In 2005, I initiated the two-week European League for Non-Western Studies international intensive graduate seminar on Old Chinese phonology. The seminar was hosted by the Research School for Asian, African, and Amerindian Studies (CNWS) and the Office for International Relations of Leiden University, Faculty of Arts. Further two-week workshops were held in 2006 and 2007. While the first meeting was a general introduction to Old Chinese phonology in general, the focus of the follow-up meetings was put on more sinological issues to accommodate the particular needs of students working with early Chinese excavated texts. Accordingly, the 2006 and 2007 meetings combinedOld Chinese phonology with Old Chinese palaeography.

I am the Treasurer of the European Association for the Study of Chinese Manuscripts (EASCM). For more information about the society, see the official website.

Reading group early Chinese manuscripts:
The reading group targets colleagues and advanced students who share a strong interest in early Chinese manuscripts. If interested in participation, please contact me: dirk.meyer@orinst.ox.ac.uk