David W. Pankenier, Ph.D. (Asian Languages, Stanford University, 1983). Professor of Chinese, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

        My formal studies in Sinology, begun at the University of Stockholm with Göran Malmqvist, were augmented by three years of private study in the Chinese Classics with Aisin-Gioro Yü-yün in Taiwan (1974-77) prior to graduate study at Stanford (1978-83).

I’m perhaps best known for my research focusing on the connection between astronomical phenomena and epoch-making political and military events in ancient China. The awe-inspiring presence of the sky has left its imprint on human culture at all times and in all places. It is only comparatively recently that we have managed to construct an artificial environment around ourselves. While insulating us from the elements and enabling our modern lifestyle, artificial surroundings also isolate us from the sky to an unprecedented degree. The result has been an impoverished understanding of the rhythms of nature, as well a lack of appreciation for how profoundly astronomical phenomena have influenced domains as disparate as art, myth, cosmology, calendars, literature, politics, and the built environment.

My current research interests range from the history of ideas in ancient China, to cultural astronomy, to archaeoastronomy. I have published (with Xu Zhentao and Jiang Yaotiao) two volumes of translations of many hundreds of ancient Chinese astronomical observations, a collection of my own research articles in Chinese, 中國上古史實揭密: 天文考古學研究, as well as numerous articles on ancient Chinese chronology, cosmology, classical literature, and intellectual history. A new book, Astrology and Cosmology in Early China: Conforming Earth to Heaven is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press in 2013. A representative selection of the research articles is available in pdf by following the links in my curriculum vitae.

Appointed to Lehigh University Faculty 1986

Department of Modern Languages & Literature

Lehigh University, 9 West Packer Avenue, Bethlehem, PA 18015 USA