David Hogue

I am interested in early Chinese historiography, particularly in claims made about the supernatural world and ancestral sacrifice in Warring States period historiographical texts. My MA thesis, A Fresh Look at the Ghosts and Spirits of the Zuo Commentary, is about how the Zuo Commentary, in dialogues about ancestral worship rituals and narratives in which animistic gods and the spirits of the dead appear, articulates a theory of statecraft and makes evaluations about the personalities and moral qualities of historical personages. More broadly, I am interested in narrative storytelling (in text, image, or other mediums) and its ability to express worldviews, attitudes, emotional experience, and states of being.