East Asian Studies lecture: Liu Yan

Description

Dr. Liu Yan, an assistant professor of History at the University of Buffalo, will give a talk entitled "Dealing with Poisons: The Production and Circulation of Medical Knowledge in Tang China (7th and 8th Centuries)" for the Department of East Asian Studies.

Poisons figured saliently as therapeutic agents in classical Chinese pharmacy. How was the knowledge of its usage produced, controlled, and circulated? Focusing on the 7th and 8th centuries, when for the first time in Chinese history the state actively engaged in the making of pharmacological knowledge, this talk examines how the Tang court collected information about poisons from all corners of the empire, and regulated their usage for effective governance. Furthermore, this state-produced knowledge changed as it traveled from the center to the peripheries of the empire when it was adapted by local actors to fit the resources at hand. The talk demonstrates that the central government's efforts to standardize knowledge of poisons through its patronage of authoritative texts went hand in hand with its fluid transformations upon transmission in society, contingent upon local conditions and practical needs.