Doctoral Student in Asian Languages and Cultures
About
My potential PhD research examines incense culture in middle-period China, focusing on the dynamic interactions among incense, its makers, and its consumers within the evolving “smellscape” of the time. I draw on a wide range of sources, including literary and non-literary texts, historical records, incense catalogues xiangpu 香譜), and material objects, to understand how olfactory practices shaped social life, emotion, and meaning.
Methodologically, I treat olfaction as a medium through which experience and knowledge were communicated, attending to both “the sensible and the intelligible,” in David Howes’s terms. This approach pairs close textual analysis with cultural history to trace how smell was theorized, disciplined, and experienced in both everyday and ritual contexts.
These research interests stem naturally from my prior training and experience, as well as from my personal hobby of collecting modern perfumes. My M.A. thesis examined The Records of Music (Yue Ji 樂記), a Western Han text on ceremonial music theory, to explore the intellectual history of acoustic processes. During this work, I began reflecting on how current research divisions often privilege the intellectual “mind” while overlooking embodied experiences and the so-called “lower” senses, such as acoustics and olfaction, which are equally significant alongside “higher” cognition and reflection.
Research Interests
- Cultural history in middle period China
- Sensory culture and the history of the senses
- Incense culture
Languages (other than English)
- Mandarin
- Classical Chinese
- Cantonese
- French
