David Porter

Professor, English Language and Literature

dporter@umich.edu

Office Information:

435 S. State St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1003

Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies; LRCCS Faculty

Education/Degree:

Ph.D., Comparative Literature, Stanford University

About

Areas of research: Eighteenth-century studies, East-West studies, China in the European imagination, comparative cultural studies
Languages: French, German, Chinese

David Porter received the Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Stanford University in 1996 and has been teaching at the University of Michigan since that time. He is the author of Ideographia: The Chinese Cipher in Early Modern Europe (2001) and The Chinese Taste in Eighteenth-Century England (2010). Additional publications include articles on cross-cultural aesthetics and comparative methodology. He is the recipient of major research awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council for Learned Societies, the National Humanities Center, and the Institute for Advanced Study. Ongoing projects include a comparative study of the literary cultures of China and England in the 17th and 18th centuries. Teaching interests in Comparative Literature include undergraduate courses on comparative early modernities and graduate seminars on theories of world literature and comparative methodologies.

Select Publications:

Comparative Early Modernities: 1100-1800 (editor, with introduction). Forthcoming from Palgrave.
The Chinese Taste in Eighteenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Ideographia: The Chinese Cipher in Early Modern Europe. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. (Translation rights have been acquired by Nanjing People’s Press, with publication expected in 2011.)
Internet Culture (editor, with introduction). New York: Routledge, 1997.
Between Men and Feminism (editor, with introduction). London: Routledge, 1992.
“Sinicizing Early Modernity: The Imperatives of Historical Cosmopolitanism,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 43.3 (2010).
“China is Not a Foreign Country: The Promises and Perils of Cross-Cultural Comparison,” Michigan Quarterly Review 47.2 (2008), 169-181.
“Taihu Tatlers: Aesthetic Translation in the China Trade,” in Jennie Batchelor and Cora Kaplan, eds., Women and Material Culture: 1660-1830. New York: Palgrave, 2007.
“‘Beyond the Bounds of Truth: Cultural Translation and William Chambers’ Chinese Garden,” Mosaic 37.2 (2004): 41-58.
“Monstrous Beauty: Eighteenth-Century Fashion and the Aesthetics of the Chinese Taste,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 35 (2002): 395-411

Affiliation(s)

Comparative Literature
Center for Chinese Studies
English Language and Literature

Field(s) of Study

Areas of research: Eighteenth-century studies, East-West studies, China in the European imagination, comparative cultural studies
Languages: French, German, Chinese

About

Areas of research: Eighteenth-century studies, East-West studies, China in the European imagination, comparative cultural studies
Languages: French, German, Chinese

Comparative Early Modernities: 1100-1800 (editor, with introduction). Forthcoming from Palgrave.
The Chinese Taste in Eighteenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Ideographia: The Chinese Cipher in Early Modern Europe. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. (Translation rights have been acquired by Nanjing People’s Press, with publication expected in 2011.)
Internet Culture (editor, with introduction). New York: Routledge, 1997.
Between Men and Feminism (editor, with introduction). London: Routledge, 1992.
“Sinicizing Early Modernity: The Imperatives of Historical Cosmopolitanism,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 43.3 (2010).
“China is Not a Foreign Country: The Promises and Perils of Cross-Cultural Comparison,” Michigan Quarterly Review 47.2 (2008), 169-181.
“Taihu Tatlers: Aesthetic Translation in the China Trade,” in Jennie Batchelor and Cora Kaplan, eds., Women and Material Culture: 1660-1830. New York: Palgrave, 2007.
“‘Beyond the Bounds of Truth: Cultural Translation and William Chambers’ Chinese Garden,” Mosaic 37.2 (2004): 41-58.
“Monstrous Beauty: Eighteenth-Century Fashion and the Aesthetics of the Chinese Taste,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 35 (2002): 395-411

Affiliation(s)

Comparative Literature
Center for Chinese Studies
English Language and Literature

Field(s) of Study

Areas of research: Eighteenth-century studies, East-West studies, China in the European imagination, comparative cultural studies
Languages: French, German, Chinese

Highlighted Work and Publications

More Info

Comparative Early Modernities

David Porter

Recent historical scholarship has shown the way towards a geographically capacious conception of the early modern world. Featuring essays by nine leading scholars of early modern Asia and Europe, Comparative Early Modernities casts aside the legacies of European exceptionalism to reveal the interconnected multiplicity of the early modern world and of the variety of unexpected pathways linking these histories to the evolving modernities of the 21st century. In their fresh and provocative examinations of topics in literature, philosophy, art history, and political economy, the authors...

More Info

The Chinese Taste in Eighteenth-Century England

David Porter

Eighteenth-century consumers in Britain, living in an increasingly globalized world, were infatuated with exotic Chinese and Chinese-styled goods, art and decorative objects. However, they were also often troubled by the alien aesthetic sensibility these goods embodied. This ambivalence figures centrally in the period's experience of China and of contact with foreign countries and cultures more generally. David Porter analyzes the processes by which Chinese aesthetic ideas were assimilated within English culture. Through case studies of individual figures, including William Hogarth ...

More Info

Ideographia: The Chinese Cipher in Early Modern Europe

David Porter

From the first successful Jesuit mission in 1583 until the disastrous failure of the British trade embassy in 1816, China’s cultural practices transfixed the attention of Western philosophers, theologians, architects, artists, entrepreneurs, and social critics. The direct influences on European culture were many and profound, ranging from Chinese teahouses in European palace gardens to adaptations of Chinese plays for the popular stage, from calls for the restructuring of the civil service on the model of Chinese meritocracy to the espousal of Confucian precepts in the moral education...