Christopher Elford

Education

• Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley
• M.A. University of Oregon
• B.A. Southwestern University

Research

Prof. Elford specializes in the literature, poetry, and calligraphy of medieval China (2nd century - 11th century), primarily focusing on the period extending from the final years of the Eastern Han dynasty to the end of the Tang dynasty. The questions which animate his research spring from the fields of performance studies, ritual theory, technology studies, and ecology. His current book project, entitled Brushwork as Bloodwork: Character Appraisal, Calligraphy, and Individual Style in Early Medieval China, examines how changes in technologies of writing and new protocols for evaluating the personalities of candidates for civil service posts transformed the way people read, wrote, and thought about literary texts. He is also working on a second project which looks at the Hanlin Academy in the mid- and late Tang dynasty as both a powerful administrative entity and a literary institution of unsurpassable prestige through which some of the most talented writers in the period rotated at various stages of their careers.

Teaching

• CHIN 111 - First-Year Intensive Chinese I
• CHIN 112 - First-Year Intensive Chinese II
• CHIN 302 - Third-year Chinese II
• LIT 218 - Premodern Chinese Literature in Translation