Jue Guo
Jue Guo
 |
Assistant Professor, Graduate Advisor Chinese Religions 2001 Moore Hall (269) 387-0346 |
Education
Ph.D in Early Chinese Religions,
University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2008
M.A. in Early Chinese Religions,
University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2003
B.A. in Philosophy,
Beijing University, 2001
Research
Dr. Guo specializes in early China, from Warring States period to the Han dynasty (ca., 4th century B.C.E.- 2nd century C.E.), with a focus on religious practice and beliefs, particularly on a popular level that is not associated with traditional and institutionalized religions. Her research interests intersect within several related fields: China Studies, Religious Studies, History, Anthropology, and Archaeology. Widely utilizing recently discovered archaeological materials including tomb objects and texts along with historically transmitted literature, and combining textual analysis with phenomenological and comparative approaches, she aims to explore the multifaceted religious world of early China through the lens of practices in people's daily life.
Current Research Projects
Dr. Guo is currently finishing a book manuscript titled A Life on Display: Reconstructing the Worlds of an Early Chinese Official. This book explores how a fourth-century B.C.E. high-ranking Chu minister, Shao Tuo, navigated and negotiated the personal, social, political, and religious realms of his life. Upon his death, these realms—the lifeworlds that Shao Tuo inherited, in which he participated, and among which he lived along with others—were purposefully displayed in a carefully constructed tomb and an elaborate burial, replete with copious grave goods. The burial remained intact underground for over two thousand years until the tomb was discovered in 1987. This study closely examines the archaeological materials, particularly the texts, unearthed from Shao Tuo’s tomb in conjunction with transmitted historical literature. It aims to reconstruct the operational cosmologies and map the boundaries of the lifeworlds that formed around Shao Tuo but which also involved the larger community of the living, the dead, and the spirits. A Life on Display argues that burial—where death is ostensibly the key theme—was primarily a place and practice linking and presenting the lifeworlds of the deceased. As such, burial of the dead paradoxically puts the life of its occupant on display.
In addition to this book, Dr. Guo is also working on a second research project that focuses on the classification and nature of tomb texts from early China. This research aims to investigate the role of such texts played in their specific burial context as well as in a larger religious context of early China.
Publications
Book:
A Life on Display: Reconstructing the Worlds of an Early Chinese Official (in preparation)
Articles:
"Divination." In The Blackwell Companion to Chinese Religions, eds., Randall L. Nadeau. Blackwell, forthcoming.
"Concepts of Death and the Afterlife Reflected in Newly Discovered Tomb Objects and Texts from Han China." In Amy L. Olberding and Philip J. Ivanhoe, eds., Mortality in Traditional Chinese Thought. SUNY, 2011: 85-115.
Book Reviews:
Review of Michael Nylan and Thomas Wilson, Lives of Confucius, Philosophy East and West, forthcoming.
Review of Yuri Pines, Foundations of Confucian Thought: Intellectual Life in the Chunqiu Period, 722-453 B.C.E., Pacific Affairs (Summer 2003): 292-4.
Teaching
Dr. Guo's teaching interests fall into three categories: introductory survey course and historical studies of Chinese religious traditions; thematic courses on death and the afterlife, divination, healing, and rituals from a comparative perspective; and theory and method courses that concern the study of religion in general and non-Western religions in particular.
Courses
REL 1000 Religions of the World
REL 2020 Religion in China
REL 5000 Daoism
REL 5000 Divination and Healing
REL 6000 Classics
REL 6100 Theory and Method