臺大學人資料庫及統計資料

Alexei Ditter’s scholarship centers around Chinese literature of the 8th through 10th centuries. His research focuses in particular on understanding how elite literary practices during this period evolved vis-a-vis broader social, economic, and material changes. Current interests include genre and memory in the representation of the past, traditions of humor literature in the 6th–10th centuries, and representations of Others in premodern Chinese literature. He is currently working on a book project, “Making Memories Together: Collaborative Remembering in Late Medieval China, 600–900.” In this project, Ditter studies the different actors—-informants, authors, families, calligraphers, and craftsmen-—who worked together across discrete stages—-prewriting, writing, editing, calligraphing, and inscription—-to produce and disseminate one important form of late medieval Chinese epigraphy, the entombed epitaph inscription (muzhiming 墓誌銘). He shows how the content of these works was tangibly shaped by the diverse objectives—-personal, social, political, and commercial-—of their various producers, identifies sites of contention and negotiation in their recorded memories, and demonstrates how understanding collaborative remembering can shed new light on cultures of commemoration within China and beyond. He is also co-editing, with Jessey J.C. Choo (Rutgers University) a volume of translations of medieval Chinese entombed epitaphs, and with Rao Xiao (UNC-Greensboro) a volume of translations of Chinese humor literature. Since 2015, with the ongoing support of the Tang Research Foundation, he and Dr. Choo have also co-organized an annual workshop series, New Frontiers in the Study of Medieval China.