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Mark Edward Lewis

Kwoh-Ting Li Professor in Chinese Culture

E-mail: mel1000@stanford.edu

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At Stanford Since 2002

B.A. and Ph.D., University of Chicago

Research Interests

Mark Edward Lewis’s research deals with many aspects of Chinese civilization in the late pre-imperial, early imperial and middle periods (contemporary with the centuries in the West from classical Greece through the early Middle Ages), and with the problem of empire as a political and social form.

His first book, Sanctioned Violence in Early China, studies the emergence of the first Chinese empires by examining the changing forms of permitted violence—warfare, hunting, sacrifice, punishments, and vengeance.  It analyzes the interlinked evolution of these violent practices to reveal changes in the nature of political authority, in the units of social organization, and in the defining practices and attitudes of the ruling elites.  It thus traces the changes that underlay the transformation of the Chinese polity from a league of city-states dominated by aristocratic lineages to a unified, territorial state governed by a supreme autocrat and his agents.

His second book, Writing and Authority in Early China covers the same period from a different angle.  It traces the evolving uses of writing to command assent and obedience, an evolution that culminated in the establishment of a textual canon as the foundation of imperial authority.  The book examines the full range of writings employed in early China, including divinatory records, written communications with ancestors, government documents, collective writings of philosophical traditions, speeches attributed to historical figures, chronicles, verse anthologies, commentaries, and encyclopedic compendia.  It shows how these writings in different ways served to form social groups, administer populations, control officials, invent new models of intellectual and political authority, and create an artificial language whose mastery generated power and whose graphs become potent, almost magical, objects.

His third book, The Construction of Space in Early China, examines the formation of the Chinese empire through its reorganization and reinterpretation of its basic spatial units: the human body, the household, the city, the region, and the world.  It shows how each higher unit—culminating in the empire—claimed to incorporate and transcend the units of the preceding level, while in practice remaining divided and constrained by the survival of the lower units, whose structures and tensions they reproduced.  A companion volume, The Flood Myths of Early China, shows how these early Chinese ideas about the constituent elements of an ordered, human space—along with the tensions and divisions therein—were elaborated and dramatized in a set of stories about the re-creation of a structured world from a watery chaos that had engulfed it.

In addition to these specialist monographs, Lewis has written the first three volumes of a six-volume survey of the entire history of imperial China: The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han, China Between Empires: The Northern and Southern Dynasties, and China’s Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty.  These volumes serve as introductions to the major periods of Chinese history for non-specialists, and as background readings to introductory surveys.  In addition to recounting the major political events, they devote chapters to the most important aspects of the society of each period: geographic background, cities, rural society, kinship, religion, literature, and law.

Lewis is currently writing a monograph on the emotions in early China.  It will examine how emotions, such as anger, love, joy, and sorrow, were defined and how they were incorporated into all aspects of society.  Topics examined will include the emotional foundations of political authority; emotions in medical practice and ideas about the body; emotions as constitutive of human relations; emotions as the origin of ritual, poetry, and music; and the role of emotions in military action.

Teaching

Undergraduate

  • The Early Empires in China
  • The Age of Disunion
  • The Tang Dynasty
  • East Asia in the Early Buddhist Age
  • Beijing: From Imperial Capital to Modern City
  • Passion in Late Imperial Fiction
  • Female Divinities in Late Imperial China
  • Tang Narrative

Graduate

  • The Emotions in Early China
  • The Family in Early China
  • The Body in Early China
  • The City in Imperial China
  • The Creation of a Technical Medical Tradition in Han China
  • Poetry of the Age of Disunion
  • Classical Chinese Philosophical Texts: Sunzi and Writings on Warfare
  • Classical Chinese Philosophical Texts: Zhuangzi as Literature
  • The Hypothetical Discourse as a Genre in Medieval China

Publications

books

  • China’s Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty.  Harvard University Press, 2009.
  • China Between Empires: The Northern and Southern Dynasties.  Harvard University
    Press, 2009.
  • The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han.  Harvard University Press, 2007.  Awarded
    the Prix Stanislas Julien by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres of the
    Institut de France, 2009.
  • The Flood Myths of Early China.  State University of New York Press, 2006.
  • The Construction of Space in Early China.  State University of New York Press, 2006.
  • Writing and Authority in Early China.  State University of New York Press, 1999. 
    Awarded the Prix Budget  by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres of
    the Institut de France, 2002.
  • Sanctioned Violence in Early China. State University of New York Press, 1990.

Selected Articles

  • “Historiography and Empire,” in Oxford History of Historical Writing, Vol 1.  Ed. Grant Hardy and Andrew Feldherr.  Oxford: Oxford University Press.  Forthcoming.
  • “Swordsmanship and the Socialization of Violence in Early China,” in From Athens to Beijing: West Meets East in the Olympic Games.  Ed. Susan Brownell.  New York: Athlone.  Forthcoming.
  • “Evolution of the Shang Calendar,” in Measuring the World and Beyond: The Archaeology of Early Quantification and Cosmology. Ed. Colin Renfrew and Iain Morley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  Forthcoming.
  • “The Mythology of Early China,” in Rituels, pantheons et techniques: Histoire de la religion chinoise avant les Tang.  Ed. John Lagerwey.  Leiden: E. J. Brill.  2009.
  • “Gift Exchange and Charity in Ancient China and the Roman Empire," in Institutions of Empire: Comparative Perspectives on Ancient Chinese and Mediterranean History.  Ed. Walter Scheidel.  Stanford: Stanford University Press.  2009.
  • “Writing the World in the Family Instructions of the Yan Clan.”  Early Medieval China: Essays inHonor of Albert E. Dien Volumes 13-13: Part 1. 2007.
  • “The Just War in Early China,” in The Ethics of War in Asian Civilizations. Ed. Torkel Brekke. London: Routledge, 2006.
  • “Writings on Warfare Found in Ancient Chinese Tombs.” Sino-Platonic Papers 158 (August 2005).
  • “Custom and Human Nature in Early China.” Philosophy East and West 53:3 (July 2003).
  • “Dicing and Divination in Early China.” Sino-Platonic Papers.121 (July 2002).
  • “The Han Abolition of Universal Military Service,” in Warfare in Chinese History. Ed. Hans van de Ven.   E. J. Brill, 2000.
  • “The City-State in Spring-and-Autumn China,” in A Comparative Study of Thirty City-StateCultures. Ed. M. H. Hansen.  Historisk-filosofiske Skrifter 21.  The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, 2000.
  • “The Feng and Shan Sacrifices of Emperor Wu of the Han,” in State and Court Ritual in China. Ed. Joseph McDermott.  Cambridge University Press, 1999.
  • “Political History of the Warring States,” in The Cambridge History of Ancient China.  Ed. Michael Loewe and Edward Shaughnessy.  Cambridge University Press, 1999.
  • “The Ritual Origins of the Warring State.” Bulletin de l'École Française d'Extrême- Orient 84:2 (1997).
  • “The Warring State in China as Institution and Idea,” in War: A Cruel Necessity? Ed. Robert A. Hinde.  I. B. Tauris, 1995.
  • “Les rites comme trame de l'histoire,” in Changement et idées de changement en Chine.  Ed. Vivienne Alton. Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises, 1994.
  • “The Suppression of the Sect of the Three Stages: Apocrypha as a Political Issue,” in Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha.  Ed. Robert Buswell, ed., University of Hawaii Press, 1990.

Publications and Activities for a Popular Audience

  • Taught a course “Sunzi: The Art of War” at Google University, April 28-June 2, 2008.
  • Presented a talk “Origins of Swordsmanship as a Chinese Martial Art” at Little House Community Activities Center, Menlo Park, CA.  March 15, 2008.
  • Contributed to the volume The Dragon's Ascent, a survey of Chinese science accompanying the television series of the same name produced in association with the Needham Research Institute. 
  • Wrote the survey history chapter for China: The Land of the Heavenly Dragon.  Duncan Baird, 2000.
  • Wrote article "Tortoise, Bone, Bamboo: Writing in Ancient China" for British Museum Magazine 25, Summer 1996.  This article was also published, in Danish translation, in the magazine of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen, Denmark.  Winter 1996.
  • Wrote article "The Art of Battle" for the Souvenir Issue of the Times Supplement in association with the "Mysteries of Ancient China" exhibition.  September 1996.
  • Was interviewed by the BBC for television program on "Qin Shihuang Di, the First Emperor of China", screened 13 September 1996.

Awards

  • The Humboldt Stiftung Forschungspreis from the German government for a year of research based at Münster University in 2008-2009.  Gave invited lectures at Zürich,
    Leipzig, Bochum, Bonn, Hamburg, Tübingen, Wurzburg, and Heidelberg.
  • Graduate course devoted to the books of Mark Edward Lewis in Spring Quarter, 2009 at the University of Southern California.
  • The Prix Stanislas Julien by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres of the Institut de France in 2009 for The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han.
  • The Prix Budget by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres of the Institut de France in 2002 for Writing and Authority in Early China.
  • Harvard Society of Fellows

Professional Activities

  • Referee papers for the Journal of Military History, Journal of Asian Studies, Philosophy East and West, and T’oung Pao,and books for Oxford University Press, State University of New York Press, University of Hawaii Press, University of Washington Press, and Yale University Press.
  • Co-editor of the series Oxford Studies in Early Empires, published by Oxford University Press.

Professional memberships

  • Association for Asian Studies
  • Association Française d'Études Chinoises
  • British Association for Chinese Studies
  • European Association of Chinese Studies