Bruce Rusk
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ADVICE AND INSIGHTS FROM UBC FACULTY ON REACHING OUT TO SUPERVISORS
These videos contain some general advice from faculty across UBC on finding and reaching out to a potential thesis supervisor.
Supervision Enquiry
Graduate Student Supervision
Doctoral Student Supervision
Dissertations completed in 2010 or later are listed below. Please note that there is a 6-12 month delay to add the latest dissertations.
This dissertation examines the long-term effects of the great population movements of the early Ming period (1368–1424) in China by studying the geocultural identity of internal migrants and their descendants. Such people, were affiliated with multiple places, administratively and socioculturally. It focuses on the representation of migration and its legacies in literary writings by the migrants’ descendants in mid-Ming (1425–1521), in particular the case of Li Dongyang (1447–1517), through both his own writing and posthumous commemoration of him in late imperial China (1368–1911). During the early Ming, at least one-sixth of the population migrated within the empire. Migrants and their descendants were registered and required to remain in their new domiciles. They were separated from their ancestral hometowns, which were nonetheless administratively and culturally significant, for example being recorded in civil service examination records. As the descendant of family of military migrants, Li held two different geographical identities: a person from his ancestral hometown of Chaling in modern-day Hunan province and a registered resident of Beijing. Although modern scholarship has treated Li as the leader of a “Chaling Literary School,” focusing on his connection with Chaling, I argue that he was more closely tied to Beijing. This dissertation shows that he treated these two “homes” differently and did not fully belong to either. While defining himself as a person of Chaling to acknowledge his familial roots, he expressed a personal attachment to Beijing as his place of birth, residence, and afterlife. This dissertation argues that this reflection of past migration should also be considered a significant feature of his literary works. After Li’s lifetime, the complexity of his geographical identity is reflected in his portrayal by different groups: Hunan officials in the capital regarded him as a person from their native home, whereas local Beijing literati thought of him as a neighbor in the past. Migrants and their descendants like Li has multiple geocultural identities that could be invoked to different ends, in their lifetimes and afterward.
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Marginalia are a variety of writings and symbols drawn by readers on the pages of books. In Chinese history, marginalia were rare in both records and physical books before the late Ming (1368-1644). The early-Qing (1644-1911) calligrapher, bibliophile, and textual scholar He Zhuo (1661-1722) devoted himself to reading and collating books and composed marginalia on hundreds of titles. After his death, the composition and transcription of marginalia started to become a popular scholarly practice. The transcription of marginalia helped to build up a rather efficient model of transmitting information, knowledge, and thought among scholars. It formed a particular scholarly culture—a systematic way for scholars to think and behave. This study explores how this scholarly culture took form, gained momentum, and shaped scholarly styles and scholars’ lives, thoughts, mental states in the Qing dynasty. The main part of this study is made up of four chapters. Chapter 2 introduces the characteristics of marginalia in comparison with other Chinese interpretive texts. Chapter 3 is a case study of He Zhuo’s marginalia. Focusing on He’s marginalia on the Hou Hanshu (History of the Later Han Dynasty [25-220]), this chapter explores He’s reading habits and scholarly practices, and their influence on later scholars and readers. Chapter 4 is concerned with questions of who participated in the practice of transcribing marginalia, how different participants were involved in the process of transcription, and their motives and attitudes. Chapter 5 analyses different transcriptionists’ colophons, so as to explore their private lives and mental states. Qing scholars spent an enormous amount of time and energy composing and transcribing marginalia. They were concerned with both content and form of marginalia. In this process, scholars not only tried to accumulate knowledge, but also pursued its aesthetic values. They inherited reading habits and scholarly approaches from Ming scholars, and developed their own way of reading, doing research, and living.
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Master's Student Supervision
Theses completed in 2010 or later are listed below. Please note that there is a 6-12 month delay to add the latest theses.
This thesis examines two readings of Xixiang ji (Romance of the Western Chamber), a zaju play that emerged in the thirteenth century China and is attributed to Wang Dexin (1250-1337?, better known as Wang Shifu). It examines the construction of meaning through the reading practices of two readers, the Chinese commentator Jin Shengtan (1610?-1661) and an anonymous reader in late Chosŏn (1392–1897) Korea. The play was introduced to Chosŏn Korea in the early sixteenth century, and Jin Shengtan’s commentated edition was the most widespread there. This thesis aims to reconstruct the reading experiences of both Jin Shengtan, through his commentarial practices, and that of an anonymous Korean reader, through handwritten reading notes in Literary Sinitic. These marginalia were left in an anonymous manuscript Korean translation of Xixiang ji based on Jin Shengtan’s version of the play. By comparing the two interpretations, the thesis attempts to illustrate : 1) how meanings were constructed through individual reading practices; 2) the extent to which a reader’s interpretation of an original text would be consistent with a commentator’s reading and editorial practices; and 3) variations in the construction of meaning when texts travel across national borders and readership shifts from one interpretive community to another, that is, when readers are subject to differing cultural norms or discourses. The thesis finds that the efficacy of Jin Shengtan’s commentarial effort in prescribing the Korean reader’s reading practice was limited. Although the Korean reader appears to be heavily influenced by Jin’s commentary in his appreciation of the aesthetics of the play, his readings differ significantly from Jin’s concerning the play’s underlying morality, the identity of its heroine, its generic status, and the significance of its themes of dreaming and fantasy. On these points, social/cultural norms, and in particular divergences within Confucian philosophy were more consequential for the construction of meaning by the two readers, i.e., the rise of the Wang Yangming School of Heart-Mind Learning in late imperial China as opposed to the Cheng-Zhu School of Principle that was hegemonic in late Chosŏn Korea.
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This thesis presents a reappraisal of the intellectual development of the prominent seventeenth-century Chinese scholar Sun Qifeng 孫奇逢 (1585-1675). Born in North China during the waning years of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), Sun was one of the most influential Neo-Confucian thinkers of the Ming-Qing transition. Most historians typically assert that Sun’s influence in Chinese intellectual history was derived from his attempt to alleviate sectarian debates within Confucianism in his seminal work, Transmission of the Lineage of the Learning of Principle (Lixue zong chuan 理學宗傳), but this thesis proposes to contextualize Sun’s legacy in an alternative way. Using Transmission of the Lineage of the Learning of Principle as a focal point, this project reexamines Sun’s vision of the Way (dao 道) through the lens of the interaction between learning and politics during the Ming-Qing transition and offers a fresh interpretation of the collaboration between northern and southern scholarly communities in seventeenth-century China.
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Publications
- Symptoms of an Unruly Age: Li Zhi and Cultures of Early Modernity (2018)
Chinese Studies, 36 (4), 317--322 - The Art of Being Governed: Everyday Politics in Late Imperial China (2018)
The China Quarterly, 235, 909--911 - The book of swindles: selections from a late Ming collection (2017)
Columbia UP, - Where the Truth Lies: Evidence and Argument in Late Imperial Debates about the Great Learning (2015)
Lectures et usages de la Grande étude, , 187--196 - World antiquarianism: comparative perspectives (Issues & Debates), written by Alain Schnapp, Lothar von Falkenhausen, Peter N. Miller, and Tim Murray (2015)
East Asian Publishing and Society, 5 (1), 139--143 - Artifacts of Authentication: People Making Texts Making Things in Ming-Qing China (2012)
Antiquarianism and intellectual life in Europe and China, 1500–1800, , 180--204 - Critics and commentators: the Book of poems as classic and literature (2012)
Harvard University Asia Center, (81) - Old Scripts, New Actors: European Encounters with Chinese Writing, 1500-1700 (2007)
East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine, (26), 68--116 - Not Written in Stone: Ming Readers of the Great Learning and the Impact of Forgery (2006)
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 66 (1), 189--231
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