Professor Roel Sterckx
Needham Professor of Chinese
t: (01223) 333286
Departmental webpage: http://www.ames.cam.ac.uk/directory/sterckxroel
What is your subject and specific area of study?
I teach and study Chinese and Chinese civilisation. My high school years were peppered with Latin, Greek and European languages. I must admit that my decision to read Chinese at university was inspired more by random curiosity than by careful planning or indeed career considerations. Having grown up in a rural community in Flanders, studying Chinese however instantly opened up an entirely new world for me and, two decades on, I’m still learning. After college I decided to focus on the study of classical and literary Chinese and the classical age of the great Chinese thinkers such as Confucius. Since my graduate work in Taiwan, Beijing and Cambridge I have continued to work on Chinese cultural history, religion and thought in traditional China, as well as classical Chinese philology. I am also fascinated by the ways in which the Chinese tradition reinvents itself constantly in the modern age. I have written about Chinese views on animals, sacrifice, and … food. At present I am interested in the relationship between goods and ideas in pre-modern China and perceptions of wealth and poverty. I am also working on a cultural ecology of early and medieval China and am trying to find out how perceptions of the natural environment in China were inspired by philosophical, religious and socio-political ideologies such as Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism.
What makes Clare College such a good place to study your subject?
Very few universities worldwide can claim a tradition of teaching Chinese that dates back to 1888 … and no building in Cambridge is located closer to the university’s unique East Asian library collection than Clare’s Memorial Court! Clare is a good place to study languages and cultures generally. It is one of few Cambridge colleges that have fellows in virtually all major languages taught in the Tripos, from Rome to Beijing. Among our diverse student body, you will easily find overseas fellow students to test your Chinese or Japanese characters on. We aim to strive for fluency in the modern Chinese language, a solid grounding in classical and literary Chinese and a critical understanding of the rich variety of Chinese and East Asian cultures. At Clare you will experience an exceptional challenge to your character and talents that will equip you for rewarding careers and a lifetime of appreciation of the vibrant living tradition of non-Western societies.
Main Publications:
The Animal and the Daemon in Early China
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002)
Of Tripod and Palate: Food, Politics and Religion in Traditional China (ed)
(New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005)
A Bronze Menagerie: Mat Weights of Early China (with MC Wang, E Wang, G Lai)
(Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum & University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006)
De l'Esprit aux Esprits: Enquête sur la notion de shen en Chine (with R Graziani)
Extrême-orient, Extrême-occident, 29
(Saint-Denis: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 2007)
Food, Sacrifice, and Sagehood in Early China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011)