David Barnett Lurie

Education

Selected Papers and Publications (for errata click here; for a list of downloadable pdfs click here)

• “The Vernacular in the World of Wen: Sheldon Pollock’s Model in East Asia?” in The Language of the Sages in the Realm of Vernacular Inscription: Reading Sheldon Pollock from the Sinographic Cosmopolis, ed. Ross King, E. J. Brill, 2023
  
• “Back to the Future: The Mythological Theories of Kawai Hayao (1928-2007),” at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Boston, 16 March 2023
  
• “Negative Aesthetics: The Power of Ugliness in Japanese Mythology,” at “Aesthetics as Epistemic Practice in Premodern Cultures,” Freie Universität Berlin, 26 June 2021
• Participant in virtual panel discussion on “Turning Points” as part of the Call for Papers for the 2022 Association for Japanese Literature Studies conference at UCLA, March 2021
• “Creative Destruction: Making and Restoring Fragments in Premodern Japanese Commentary,” Interdisciplinary Research Seminar on Ethical Reading, Oxford University, 20 January 2021
• “Sekai no moji/riterashī no rekishi to kodai Nihon” [Ancient Japan and the World History of Writing and Literacy], in Kodaishi o hiraku 6: Moji to kotoba, ed. Kawajiri Akio et al., Iwanami shoten, 2020
  
• “Orikuchi Shinobu ni yoru ‘irogonomi’ no sōzō: Konkyo to shite no Kojiki o megutte” [Orikuchi Shinobu’s Creation of the Concept of ‘Promiscuity’: Concerning the Use of the Kojiki as Support], Kokugo to kokubungaku 96:11, November 2019
  
• “Japanese Lexicography from ca. 1800 to the Present,” in The Cambridge World History of Lexicography, ed. John Considine, Cambridge University Press, 2019
  
• “The Printed Book as Script Contact Zone: Japanese Glossed Xylographic Editions of Chinese Texts,” at “Scripts in Contact: Practices and Interference,” Scripta/Research University Paris (PSL), 28 February 2019
  
• “Parables of Inscription: Some Notes on Narratives of the Origin of Writing,” History and Theory Theme Issue 56, December 2018
• “Creation from Destruction: Weapon as Symbol in Japanese Mythology,” at “Ways of Seeing, Ways of Reading 2: The Aesthetics and Anthropology of Arms and Armor” (Columbia-PSL), Columbia University, 20 October 2018
  
• “Dead Goddesses and Living Narratives: Variant Accounts in Early Japanese Mythology,” École Francaise d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO) and Scuola Italiana di Studi sull'Asia Orientale (ISEAS), Kyoto Lectures, 4 June 2018
  
• “Rethinking Kana Teleology: Persistence of, and Progress Towards, Logography in the History of Japanese Writing,” at “Issues Regarding Religion and Society in Ancient and Medieval Japan,” Princeton University, 4 November 2017
  
• “Linguistics as a History of Itself: The Retrospective Impulse of National Language Studies in late 19th/early 20th Century Japan,” at “Philology and the Science of Language, 1850-1950,” Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 2 June 2017
• “The Epigraphic Archive of Early Japan: Kariya Ekisai’s Inscriptions of the Ancient Capitals (1818) and its 20th Century Sequel,” American History Association Annual Meeting, Denver, 5 January 2017
  
• “The Poetics of Refrigeration in Classical Japanese Literature,” at "ICE3: An Inquiry into the Aesthetics, History, and Science of Ice," Society of Fellows in the Humanities, Columbia University, 15 April 2016
  
• “Introduction: Writing, Literacy, and the Origins of Japanese Literature”; “Myth and History in the Kojiki, Nihon shoki, and Related Works”; and “Fudoki Gazetteers,” in The Cambridge History of Japanese Literature, ed. Haruo Shirane and Tomi Suzuki with David Lurie, Cambridge University Press, 2016
• “Toward a General History of Writing: Thinking with Innis and Gelb,” talk at the Neubauer Collegium, University of Chicago, 21 February 2014
• Sekai no mojishi to Man'yoshu [“The Man'yoshu and the World History of Writing”], Kasama Shoin, 2013
• “The Development of Japanese Writing,” in The Shape of Script: How and Why Writing Systems Change, ed. Stephen Houston, SAR Press, 2012
  
• Realms of Literacy: Early Japan and the History of Writing, Harvard University Asia Center, 2011
• "Titles of the Current Realm: Script, Language, and the Earliest Japanese Bibliographies," talk at Toronto Centre for the Book, 18 March 2011
  
• "Language, Writing, and Disciplinarity in the Critique of the 'Ideographic Myth': Some Proleptical Remarks," Language & Communication 26 (2006)
  
• "Orientomology: The Insect Literature of Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904)," in JAPANimals: History and Culture in Japan's Animal Life, ed. Gregory M. Pflugfelder and Brett L. Walker, University of Michigan Press, 2005.
• "The Author Formerly Known as Prince Shotoku: Royal Authority and Narratives of Literacy in Early Japan," paper delivered, Association of Asian Studies Annual Meeting: Chicago, 3 April 2005.
  
• "On the Inscription of the Hitomaro Poetry Collection: Between Literary History and the History of Writing," Man'yoshu kenkyu 26 (May 2004).
  
• "Windows on Japanese Literature"; six-part monthly newspaper series introducing modern Japanese authors to English-speaking readers. Daily Mainichi: Tokyo, February-July 2000.

Research interests

• History of writing systems
• Cultural, intellectual, and literary history of early Japan
• Development of reading systems and Japanese reception of Chinese texts
• History of Japanese dictionaries and encyclopedias
• Emergence of the hiragana and katakana syllabaries in 9th century Japan
• Medieval and early modern commentaries on early Japanese texts
• Early modern Japanese epigraphic and antiquarian studies
  
• History of Japanese linguistic thought
• Japanese and comparative mythology
• World philology
  

Contact Information

DBL11@columbia.edu

for virtual office hours 

Current and Past Courses 

Tribute to Reuben Lurie (1898-1985)
 
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Page created 24 November 2001; revised 22 January 2024