Doctoral Student in Asian Languages and Cultures
About
I am interested in investigating early Chinese views, covering the period c. 500-100 BCE, on affects and passions, and how they shaped and were shaped by their conceptions of the body and embodiment of rituals. The questions that drive my research are: What constitutes the body? What is the relationship between management of the body and political governance? What is the role of ritual in one’s affective experiences? I enjoy engaging with the works of theorists from a variety of fields, including scholars that engage with post-humanist perspectives that rupture human-nonhuman binaries, assemblage theory that gives us new articulations of interdependence of all organisms, critical animal studies and ecology. Exposure to these perspectives has helped me interpret early Chinese texts with an eye toward their relevance to contemporary issues of personhood, agency, affect and ecology. My hope is to contribute to the field by expanding our understanding of early Chinese thought and its relevance to contemporary studies of personhood and affect. Asian Languages and Cultures department at University of Michigan has given me crucial opportunities to pursue and expand my research interest from an interdisciplinary perspective with its strong faculty members in Chinese philosophy, religion, history, and literature.
Languages (other than English)
- Mandarin Chinese
- Classical Chinese
- Turkish
