Current efforts in computational historical linguistics are predominantly concerned
with phylogenetic inference. Methods for ancestral state reconstruction have only
been applied sporadically. In contrast to phylogenetic algorithms, automatic reconstruction methods presuppose phylogenetic information in order to explain what has
evolved when…[Read more]

The discipline of Historical Chinese Phonology has made great progress during the last thirty years.
Thanks to these improvements we have now a much clearer picture of the history of the Chinese language and the development of the Chinese writing system. Since Historical Chinese Phonology is an
inherently data-driven discipline, it is, however,…[Read more]

When it comes to Japanese literary heritage, why and how are we able to access it? The shape of what is preserved and available is driven by and in turn dictates the shape of our canon(s). Yet we often do not think of the labor and social networks behind the reprinting and digitizing that allows us to access literature in the first place, whether…[Read more]

The purpose of this course is to introduce graduate students to the tools, methods, and history of sinology. Sinology refers to the study of China as performed in a philological manner. Philology refers to the historical study of language and literature in its fullest context. It is inherently interdisciplinary. It draws on the fields of…[Read more]

This presentation explains my undergrad/grad seminar “East Asian DH” (EALC111/511) at University of Pennsylvania in Spring 2018. I focus on the survey format of the seminar, as dictated by the challenge of trying to reach students working on many aspects of the un-discipline of East Asian studies, which encompasses a large region, at least three…[Read more]

This dataset was produced as part of the Research Workshop on China’s Local Gazetteers, Computerized Data Analysis and Visualization, held at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG), Berlin, August 1-19, 2016. Fulltext data from 11 local gazetteers (fangzhi 方志) was processed to find instances of religious buildings (temp…[Read more]