Matthias Ludwig Richter

Affiliated Faculty are not employees of the Center for Asian Studies. Please contact this faculty member at their home department.

Education

Ph.D., Sinology, Hamburg Univeresity, 2000

CAS Speaker Bureau Topic(s)

Early Chinese literature and philosophy; manuscript studies

Regional and Thematic Interests

East Asia
Literature and the Arts

Profile

My research focuses on early Chinese politico-philosophical literature. I am especially interested in how the texts from pre-imperial China, which have been transmitted to us in a form they were given only in the early empire, were understood at the time when they were composed before the Chinese empire was founded. I apply methods of historical textual criticism and make extensive use of newly excavated manuscripts to explore notions of textual identity in pre-imperial China. This new approach to early Chinese literature will in many ways lead to a re-writing of the history of early Chinese thought.

Selected Publications

2013. The Embodied Text — Establishing Textual Identity in Early Chinese Manuscripts. (Studies in the History of Chinese Texts). Leiden: Brill.