Ari Daniel Levine F'09

American Research in the Humanities in China 2009
Assistant Professor
Department: History
University of Georgia
Cultural Memory and Urban Space in Song Dynasty Kaifeng

This research project investigates cultural memory and urban space in the city of Kaifeng, the capital of the Northern Song dynasty (960-1127), which fell to Jurchen invaders in 1126-7. Members of the post-conquest literati elite responded to this political cataclysm and cultural crisis with a sense of homelessness. Relocated to South China, they left behind a literature of exile and defeat, which expressed nostalgia for the city’s street life and urban spaces. By examining this extensive corpus of published and manuscript sources, this study explains how Kaifeng became a site of collective memory, and how literati produced a refashioned past that salved the trauma of personal and national loss.