China & Inner Asia Section, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures
Senior Teaching Fellow in Chinese Literature (Modern & Classical)
- Name:
- Dr Liu Yangruxin
- Email address:
- yl23@soas.ac.uk
- Telephone:
- 398
- Address:
- SOAS University of London
Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG - Building:
- Russell Square: College Buildings
- Office No:
- 398
- Academic Support Hours:
- Thursday 3-5pm
Internal Supervisors
PhD Research
As a celebrated historical account and great literature, the Shiji 史記 (The Grand Scribe's Records) is one of the most widely read texts and has been subject to various analyses and interpretations. Instead of answering what the “right” reading is, my research will seek to answer why it is read in a specific way, which has not drawn much scholarly attention so far. I will mainly focus on the Song dynasty, during which the Shiji was regarded as a model of prose style but also often contradicted in intellectual writings. To gain insight into interpretations of the Shiji in this period, I will investigate various factors that might have influenced the reading, such as the accessibility of the text, the modes of transmission of the text, the composition of the readership, the purpose of reading, and relevant political and social activities of readers, etc.