Congratulations to Asian Studies alumnus, Dr. Yinzong Wei (韋胤宗) who recently published a book based on his 2019 dissertation! The book, 《浩蕩游絲 : 何焯與清代的批校文化》(中华书局) was released last year in Chinese. The English version, Scholars and Their Marginalia in Late Imperial China (Brill), will be published on March 17, 2022.
Marginalia are a variety of writings and symbols written by readers in book margins. This study focuses on marginalia and explores the reading practices and the scholarly culture of late Imperial China. Beginning in the late Ming and early Qing, more scholars devoted themselves to reading and collating ancient texts.
They developed the habit of writing marginalia while reading, of transcribing other readers’ marginalia, and of printing marginalia, all of which formed a particular scholarly culture. This book explores how this culture developed, gained momentum, and shaped the styles, lives, thoughts, and mind states of scholars in the Qing dynasty.
About Dr. Yinzong Wei
Dr. Yinzong Wei researched the intellectual history and scholarly culture of late imperial China. Focusing on a particular writing—marginalia—and the scholarly practices about marginalia, he examined how marginalia were composed, circulated, edited and printed from the late Ming to early republic period, so as to explore scholars’ thoughts and mentality revealed in these practices. His interests include intellectual history, culture history, classical studies, history of the book and traditional Chinese historiography, with a particular interest in discovering meaningful points of intersection between these fields of study. He earned his M.A. in Chinese Language and Literature at Peking University in 2014, and received his Ph.D. degree from the UBC Department of Asian Studies in 2019.
