Associate Professor of Religion, Dartmouth College

Received the Polonsky Travel Grant in 1992

I specialize in Chinese Religion, with a particular interest in Daoism, and the interaction between Daoism, popular religious practices, and Buddhism. I first visited China in 1992 when I received the Polonsky Grant in order to travel to Tianjin and advance my Chinese studies. I continued visiting China in the following years, as I completed my degree in History at the Hebrew University (B.A., 1992) and pursued graduate work in Chinese Religions at Indiana University (M.A., 1996; Ph.D., 2004). During these years I spent several years in Taiwan, studying and working with Daoist priests. I have been teaching at Dartmouth since 2004.

My recent book Emergence of Daoism: Creation of Tradition (Routledge, 2012) examines the formation of the Daoist religious tradition between the second and fifth centuries C.E. My research interests include Daoist ritual and visual culture, Chinese sacred geography and mythology, and concepts of the body and sexual practices in Chinese religions.

Selected bibliography:

The Emergence of Daoism: Creation of Tradition. (London: Routledge Press, 2012).

Co-editor with Lucia Dolce and Katja Triplett, “Ritual Discourse, Ritual Performance in China and Japan,” Section II of Axel Michaels, ed. Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual; Vol.1 Grammars and Morphologies of Ritual Practices in Asia (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 2010).

“Imbibing the Universe: Methods of Ingesting the Five Sprouts,” Asian Medicine, Tradition and Modernity 7 (2013): 76-111.

“Anaphors or Cataphors? A Discussion of the Two Qi’s 其 in the First Chapter of the Dao De Jing,” with Yoav Ariel, Philosophy East and West 60.3 (July 2010): 391-421.

“The Way of the Yellow and the Red: Sexual Practice in Early Daoism,” Nan Nü, Men, Women and Gender in China 10 (2008): 86-120.

“Time Manipulation in Early Daoist Ritual: The East Well Chart and the Eight Archivists,” Asia Major 18 (2005): 27-65.

“Birthing the Self: Metaphor and Transformation in Medieval Daoism” in Jia Jihnhua, Kang Xiaofei, and Yao Ping, eds. Gendering Chinese Religion: Subject, Identity, and Body (State University of New York Press; forthcoming 2013)