History Research

 
    I work on questions about the history of writing and philology in the premodern Sinosphere. My senior thesis complicates longstanding claims about
    the link between the demoticizing orientation of Buddhism and the emergence of vernacular forms of writing that eventually supplanted Literary 
    Sinitic. The thesis does so by offering a translation, annotation, and close reading of a text written in 667 in Literary Sinitic by Daoxuan, a 
    Buddhist monk who was part of the multi-religious (Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist) courtly, literate elite during the early Tang dynasty. 
    
    Daoxuan and The Record of Miraculous Instruction: A Sinitic Buddhist's Reimagining of the History of Writing in the Early Tang  
    
    (departmental honors at Columbia University; Lily Prize in History for the best senior thesis in non-U.S. history and academic excellence in non-U.S. history)