Keith Knapp

Keith Knapp received his PhD in East Asian history from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1996. He is now a professor of history at The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina.  His research interests include early medieval (220–589) Confucian thought, material culture, family life, education, and attitudes towards animals.  He has published a monograph Selfless Offspring: Filial Children and Social Order in Medieval China (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005) and co-edited two books: Early Medieval Chinese Texts: A Bibliographic Guide (Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies, 2015), and the Cambridge History of China, Volume II: The Six Dynasties, 220–589 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). For ten years, he was the president of the Early Medieval China Group.  Presently, he is the Chair of the Southeast Early China Roundtable and is serving on the executive board of the T’ang Studies Society, and the editorial committees of Early Medieval China and the Journal of Chinese History.  At the MPIWG, he is a member of the  “Transience: Politics and Practices of Time in the Chinese Period of Division” working group in Dept. III. He is exploring the recluse and alchemist Ge Hong’s (283–343) criticism of Daoist anarchism and his defense of political hierarchy and a progressive, linear vision of time.