Marjorie Burge

Marjorie Burge received a BA in Asian Studies and Japanese from the George Washington University, and an MA and PhD from the Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures at UC Berkeley.

Marjorie’s current book project, titled Unearthing Written Cultures of Early Korea and Japan, explores writing in the Korean kingdoms of Paekche (ca. third century CE-660CE) and Silla (ca. third century CE-935CE) and early Japan through inscriptions on wood slips known as mokkan. In addition to research on mokkan, Marjorie is working on projects related to the eighth-century Japanese poetry anthology Man’yōshū and fragments of documents from the kingdom of Paekche preserved in the early Japanese history Nihon shoki.

Publications:

• “Visions of the Eastland: Reading the Azuma uta of Man’yōshū.” Japanese Language and Literature 58.2 (2024): 79-113.
• “Wooden Inscriptions and the Culture of Writing in Sabi Paekche.” Asian Perspectives 58.1 (Spring 2019): 47-73.

Translations:

• Lee SeungJae, “Developing a Terminology for Pre-hangeul Korean Transcription.” Scripta 8 (October 2016): 25-71.
• Kin Bunkyō, Literary Sinitic and East Asia: A Cultural Sphere of Vernacular Reading, in press (co-translator)

Research Interests:

Pre-modern Japanese literature and culture, Pre-modern Korean literature and culture, early inscriptions, vernacular writing systems, vernacular literature, archaeology of proto/early historic Japan and Korea, waka poetry, Silla hyangga, Man’yōshū, elegiac verse, women’s diary literature