Digitally Detecting the Strange: Crime, Ghosts, and Other Odd Things in Late Imperial China

This class is an introduction to the unusual and strange in late imperial Chinese literature through digital analysis. We will focus on works that engage with the nature of evidence and reality: stories about crime and detection, ghosts, encounters with foxes, and other odd narratives. The stories we read, mostly written in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, are found across a wide array of textual genres popular in early modern China. Students will also learn to leverage a variety of digital methods to analyze these stories, covering approaches from textual analysis and mapping to network analysis and the public humanities.