Meet the Faculty

Paul Fischer

• Visiting Lecturer , Department of Religious Studies

Education

• Ph.D. at University of Chicago, 2007

Contact Information

Background

• University of Chicago Harper Dissertation Year Fellowship,
  2006-07
• University of Chicago Center for East Asian Studies
• Dissertation Writing Fellowship, 2005-06 Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, 2004-05
• Fudan University-University of Chicago Study Fellowship, 2003-04
• Foreign Language and Area Studies (Title VI) Fellowship, University of Chicago, 2001-02
  

I study East Asian religious and intellectual history. I am currently interested in two broad topics: early text formation and self-cultivation. Text criticism, when applied to early text formation, makes interesting claims about how authors of early religious works made texts and how these texts were subsequently manipulated. Self- cultivation is a retrospective label I give to an enduring and multi-faceted set of theories and practices that have existed both inside and outside of the larger religious traditions of East Asia.

Recently I have been working on a relatively obscure text called the Shi Zi, one of several dozen early “masters”
texts that often dealt with self-cultivation, ethics, and political philosophy. The most well-known authors of such “masters” texts are Confucius and Lao Zi. My analysis of the Shi Zi addresses the issues of authorship, authenticity, and “intertextuality.” Intertextuality refers to the common practice of early authors borrowing, in a variety of ways, from several kinds of extant narrative. I will continue to work on some of the other lesser-known masters texts as well as on issues of text formation. Both of these subjects have benefited in recent years from the great amount of scholarship devoted to the dozens of texts excavated from ancient tombs in China over the past several decades.

Ideas of self-cultivation are very old in China and are essential factors in all East Asian religions, both at the local level and at the idealized “great tradition” level.
In the future I want to explore how various ideas on how to align the self with the cosmos, both inside and outside the parameters of a specific religion, have affected such practices as ethics, meditation, diet, alchemy, and art.
This will necessarily involve investigation into theories of “self” and “cosmos,” as well as theories of how these are bound together with the manifestation of “spirit.”

Research Interests

• East Asian intellectual and religious history Ideas of self-cultivation
• Traditional Chinese text criticism
• The interplay between Daoism and Buddhism
• The commentarial tradition on the Chinese classics
• The tension between "great traditions" and "local religions"

Courses Recently Taught

• Religions of the East
• Religion and Literature in Asia