Sarah Allan

Sarah Allan: BIOGRAPHY

PERSONAL

Sarah (Katherine Meyers) Allan is the Burlington Northern Foundation Professor of Asian Studies in honor of Richard M. Bressler at Dartmouth College. She is also the editor of Early China, and the Chair of the Society for the Study of Early China.

Sarah Allan is married to the artist, Nicol Allan.

EDUCATION AND ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS

Sarah Allan received her B.A. from U.C.L.A. in 1966 and her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1974.

Allan taught at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, from 1972 to 1995. Since 1995, she has been the Burlington Northern Foundation Professor of Asian Studies in honor of Richard M. Bressler.

RESEARCH SPECIALIZATION

Sarah Allan specializes in the study of China before about 100 BCE. She is particularly known for an interdisciplinary approach that combines traditional and excavated Chinese texts, material culture from archaeological excavations, and palaeographic inscriptions, and for her theoretical innovations in adapting myth and metaphor theory to the analysis of early Chinese thought.

PUBLICATIONS

Allan has published widely in English and Chinese (as Ai Lan 艾兰). Her most recent book is Buried Ideas: Legends of Abdication and Ideal Government in Early Chinese Bamboo-Slip Manuscripts (SUNY Press, 2015).

Her other single-author books are: The Heir and the Sage: Dynastic Legend in Early China (CMC, 1981), The Shape of the Turtle: Myth, Art, and Cosmos in Early China (SUNY, 1991), and The Way of Water and Sprouts of Virtue (SUNY, 1995).

Commerical Press, Beijing, is publishing her books and articles in Chinese translation in a series of her "Collected Works" (Ai Lan wenji 艾兰文集). Four volumes have appeared so far. The Heir and the Sage, The Shape of the Turtle, and The Way of Water have also been translated into Korean by Ou Manjong.

COLLABORATIONS WITH CHINESE SCHOLARS

Allan began collaborating with Chinese scholars to publish early Chinese materials in Western collections in the early 1980's. Since the purpose of these collaborations was to make the materials available to Chinese scholars, these books have been published by Chinese presses and primarily in Chinese. Oracle Bone Collections in Great Britain (1985, 1992) on which she collaborated with Li Xueqin 李学勤 and Qi Wenxin 齐文心 , then of the Institute of History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, was probably the first academic collaboration by Western and Chinese scholars after China opened to the West. She also collaborated with Li and Qi to publish the oracle bone inscriptions in the collection of the Museum of the Far East, Stockholm and with Li Xueqin to publish bronzes selected from various European collections Dunhuang manuscripts, thus making these materials available to Chinese scholars for research. Allan and Frances Wood of the British Library were instrumental in establishing the collaborative Dunhuang Manuscript project in 1988. It published 14 volumes of non-Buddhist manuscripts in the British Library and was the forerunner of the current International Dunhuang Project.

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCES AND WORKSHOP ORGANIZATION

Allan has organized a number of international conferences and workshops, which have made important contributions to Early China studies. This began with an "Early China Seminar" when she was teaching at SOAS. Particularly noteworthy was a symposium on interpreting the motifs on Chinese bronzes that she organized with Roderick Whitfield. The resulting, vociferous debate about interpreting the motifs, published as The Problem of Meaning in Early Chinese Ritual Bronzes, is often used as a textbook in Chinese art history classes.

After Allan began teaching at Dartmouth College in 1995, she continued organizing topical workshops and conferences. Many of these have focused on the Warring States period (c. 475-221 BCE) bamboo-slip manuscripts. The first group of such manuscripts, found in Guodian Tomb One, in Hubei Province, were published in 1998, and included material now found in the Laozi Daodejing. With the help of Chinese scholars, she and Robert Henricks convened an international conference on the manuscripts soon after their release, the proceeding of which were published as The Guodian Laozi. This became the seminal work in a new field of "Bamboo-manuscript Studies." Since 1998, Allan has organized many other international conferences and workshops on excavated texts. An important feature of these conferences is that they involve collaboration with scholars from China and the West and involve collective close reading by scholars from different academic disciplines and sinological traditions.

CURRENT RESEARCH

Many of the bamboo-slip manuscripts discovered in recent decades include material that is related to issues Allan had raised in her earlier work. Thus, much of her research has focused on this new material. Her newest book, Buried Ideas: Legends of Abdication and Ideal Government in Early Chinese Bamboo-Slip Manuscripts, reconstructs, translates, and analyses manuscripts that relate to the dynastic legend discussed in her first one, The Heir and the Sage: Dynastic Legend in Early China.

Allan has also continued to write on a broad range of topics in early China studies and is currently working on a book on the art of China from 2000 to 1000 BCE.

MOST IMPORTANT PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES

Chair, Society for the Study of Early China (2010-16),

Editor, Early China (2010-16).

Member, Academic Committee, Center for Cooperation and Innovation in Research on Unearthed Texts and the Ancient Civilization of China, Tsinghua University (2015-)

Member, Editorial Board, Antiquity (2012-)

Founder, Chairman of the Early China Seminar, British Association for Chinese Studies (1981-95).

Founder, Co-Chair, Dunhuang Manuscript Project, 1988-95.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOOKS (Authored)

2015 Buried Ideas: Legends of Abdication and Ideal Governtment in Recently Discovered Early Chinese Bamboo-slip Manuscripts. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2015.

2010-11 Ai Lan Wenji 艾兰文集 (Collected Works of Sarah Allan), Beijing: Commercial Press.

Vol. 1 (2010): Gui zhi Mi 龟之谜 (revised and expanded edition); Vol. 2 (2010). Shui zhi dao yu de zhi duan 水之道与德之端 (revised and expanded edition); Vol. 3 (2010) Shixi yu shanrang 世袭与禅让 (new translation, expanded edition); Vol. 4 (2011). Zaoqi Zhongguo Lishi, Sixiang, yu Wenhua 早期中国历史、思想、与文化 (revised and expanded edition).

1999 Ruidian Sidegeermo Yuandong Guwu Bowuguan Cang Jiagu Wenzi 瑞典斯德哥尔摩远东鼓舞博物馆甲骨文字 (Oracle Bone Inscriptions in the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm, Sweden), with Li Xueqin and Qi Wenxin, Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju.

1997 The Way of Water and Sprouts of Virtue. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

1995 Ouzhou Suocang Zhongguo Qingtongqi Yizhu 欧洲所藏中国青铜器遗珠 (English title: Chinese Bronzes: A Selection from European Collections), with Li Xueqin. Beijing: Wenwu Press.

1991 The Shape of the Turtle: Myth, Art, and Cosmos in Early China. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

1985/1992 Yingguo suocang jiagu ji 英国所藏甲骨集 （Oracle Bone Collections in Great Britain）, I (2 vols), II (2 vols), with Li Xueqin and Qi Wenxin, Beijing: Zhonghua shuju.

1981 The Heir and the Sage: Dynastic Legend in Early China. San Francisco: CMC.

BOOKS (Edited)

2005 The Formation of Chinese Civilization: An Archaeological Perspective. New Haven: Yale University Press.

2004 Xinchu Jianbo Yanjiu: Xinchujianbo guoji xueshu yantaohui wenji 2000 nian 8 yue, Beijing 新 出 简 帛 研 究: 新出简帛国际学术研讨会文集2000年8月·北京 (Studies on Recently Discovered Chinese Manuscripts: Proceedings of the International Conference on Recently Discovered Manuscripts, August, 2000), ed. with Xing Wen. Beijing: Wenwu Press.

2000 The Guodian Laozi: Proceedings of the International Conference, Dartmouth College, May 1998, with Crispin Williams. Berkeley: Institute for East Asian Studies, University of California. (Chinese edition: Guodian Laozi: Dongxifang xuezhe de duihua 东西方学者的对话. Beijing: Xueyuan Press, 2002).

1979 Legend, Lore and Religion in China: Essays in Honor of Wolfram Eberhard on his Seventieth Birthday, ed. with Alvin P. Cohen, CMC, San Francisco.

ARTICLES

2015 " 'When Red Pigeons gathered on Tang's house': A Warring States Period Tale of Shamanic Possession and Building Construction set at the turn of the Xia and Shang Dynasties," Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Series 3, 2015, .

2014 "The Life of a Chinese Historian in Tumultuous Times: Interviews with Li Xueqin, Part One" Early China 35-36 (2012-13), pp. 1-35.

2012/2015 "On Shu 書 ("Documents") and the Origin of the Shang shu 尚書 ("Ancient Documents") in Light of Recently Discovered Bamboo Slip Manuscripts," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 75.3 (October 2012), pp. 547-57.

2010 "On the Identity of Shang Di and the Origin of the Concept of a Celestial Mandate," Early China 31 (2007), pp. 1-46. (Published in 2010).

2010/2015 "He flies like a bird, he dives like a dragon, who is that man in the animal mouth? Shamanic images in Shang and Western Zhou art," Orientations, 41, number 3 (April, 2010), pp. 45-51.

2010 "T'ien and Shang Ti in pre-Han China," Acta Asiatica 98 (Tokyo, 2010), pp. 1-18.

2009 "Not the Lun yu: The Chu script bamboo slip manuscript, Zi Gao, and the nature of early Confucianism," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 51.2 (2009), pp. 115-151.

2007 "Erlitou and the Formation of Chinese Chinese Civilization: Toward a New Paradigm," Journal of Asian Studies 66, 2 (May 2007), pp. 461-97.

2003 "The Great One, Water, and the Laozi: New Light from Guodian," T'oung Pao, vol. 89, 4/5 (December 2003), pp. 237-285.

2000 "Chinese Bronzes Through Western Eyes", in Roderick Whitfield and Wang Tao, ed., Exploring China's Past: New Discoveries and Studies in Art and Archaeology, Saffron Books, London, 2000, pp. 63 - 76.

1993 "Art and Meaning", in The Problem of Meaning in Early Chinese Ritual Bronzes, Colloquies on art and Archaeology in Asia, XV, Roderick Whitfield, ed., Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, pp. 9 - 33 ; "Epilogue", in ibid., pp. l66 - 76.

1984 "The Myth of the Xia Dynasty", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1984, no. 2, pp. 242 - 256.

1981 "Sons of Suns: Myth and totemism in ancient China", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, XLIV , pt. 1, pp. 290 - 326.

1979 "Shang Foundations of Modern Chinese Folk Religion", in Legend, Lore and Religion in China, Sarah Allan and Alvin P. Cohen, ed., pp. 1 - 21.

1972-3 "The identities of Taigong Wang in Zhou and Han Literature" , Monumenta Serica XXX, pp. 57 - 99.