Constance Cook
Professor
Director, Asian Studies Program

Department of Modern Languages and Literature
516 Maginnes Hall
ph: 610-758-3091

e-mail | curriculum vitae

biography



PhD, University of California, Berkeley

Research: The study of excavated texts from ancient China. Her books and articles focus on the examination of these texts in the context of material culture and what they can tell us about belief systems and local practices.  She was awarded the Class of 1961 Professorship and fellowships from the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.


Selected recent publications

“Ancestor worship during the Eastern Zhou.” Early Chinese Religion: Part One: Shang through Han (1250 BC-220 AD). J. Lagerwey and M. Kalinowski. Leiden: Brill. Pp. 237-79.

"Zhou Dynasty." David Levinson and Karen Christensen et al, eds. Encyclopedia of Modern Asia. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2008.

Death in Ancient China: The Tale of One Man’s Journey. Leiden: Brill Press (2006).

“From Bone to Bamboo: Number Sets and Mortuary Ritual.” Journal of  Oriental Studies 41.1: 1-40. (2006) 

“Moonshine and Millet: Feasting and Purification Rituals in Ancient China.” Chapter One in Of Tripod and Palate: Food and Religion in Traditional China.  Roel Sterckx, ed. New York: Palgrave. Pp. 9-33. (2005)

Defining Chu: Image and Reality in Ancient China. Ed. with J. Major, University of Hawaii Press. (1999)

“Myth and Fragments of a Qin Yi text: A Research Note and Translation.”  (1998)

Journal of Chinese Religions 26 (1998): 135-143.


Besides Chinese language courses, Cook teaches:

ASIA/GC/MLL 165 “Love and Revolution in Shanghai”

ASIA/GC/MLL/WS 73 “"Film, Fiction, and Gender in Modern China"

ASIA/MLL 125 “Immortal Images: Traditional Chinese Literature”