Eloquence in the Mandarin Court: The Place of Poetry in the Life of Chinese Court-Officials
9:30 a.m., Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2007
Webster Hall Auditorium
Admission: free

Join Dr. Ding Xiang Warner for an introductory look at the way in which the composition of poetry once played a central role in the social life of Chinese court-officials. Discover some of the conventions and decorums of Chinese poetry while exploring in particular the art of poetic exchange among literati in medieval China.

Dr. Ding Xiang Warner is an associate professor of Chinese literature in the Department of Asian Studies at Cornell University, where she teaches courses on classical Chinese, traditional Chinese literature, and medieval Chinese poetry. She is the author of A Wild Deer Amid Soaring Phoenixes: The Opposition Poetics of Wang Ji (University of Hawaii Press, 2003) and is presently working on her second book, tentatively titled Textual Production and the Creation of a Confucian Legacy. In 2004–05, Dr. Warner was an NEH fellow at the National Humanities Center. Currently, she serves on the executive committees of the MLA’s Division on East Asian Languages and Literatures to 1900 and the Western Branch of the American Oriental Society. She is also editor of the journal T’ang Studies, as well as the co-editor of the Brill Monograph Series for Studies in the History of Chinese Texts.