David Prager Branner 林德威

Associate Professor and Chinese Program Coordinator,
University of Maryland

The Columbia University Early China Seminar

The University Seminars is a 60 year-old academic movement in which scholars from all over the East Coast take part. The roughly 75 ‘seminars’ are “autonomous and voluntary groupings” of scholars, which

“have as their central goal the integration of otherwise fragmented knowledge, a pulling together of the many threads of knowledge and experience through the stimulus of continuing discussion. […] The primary aim of the University Seminar is the attempt to see things whole, to merge the disciplines for the purpose of getting a unified view. The aim is synthesis, insight, wisdom, the understanding of the full incidence of the ongoing phenomenon to which any collegium is devoted. […] There is a manifest need for a structure which acts both to unite specialists, and to join the academy with other elements of society, into an ‘intellectual guild.’ ” http://www.columbia.edu/cu/seminars/pages/history/index.html

Since 2002, the Early China Seminar has become a primary venue for early China study (especially of material culture) in North America, hosting some 10-15 papers per year and periodic symposiums on recent archaeological finds.

Columbia Early China Seminar programs for which I share responsibility may be viewed at

1. 2007-08 academic year program
2. 2006-07 academic year program
3. 2005-06 academic year program
4. 2004-05 academic year program

Please note that under our standard agreement with our speakers, these articles are password-protected and I am not permitted to give the passwords to non-members of the Seminar.

The Seminar is now concentrating on the problems connected with literacy in early China. A short description of the program is posted on a special page. In the Spring of 2009, there will be a three-day symposium on the subject, culminating in a book.