Paul Fischer
Asian Studies Program
Department of History
Western Kentucky University
1906 College Heights Boulevard #21086
Cherry Hall Room 200
Bowling Green, Kentucky 42101
e-mail: paul.fischer@wku.edu
EMPLOYMENT
Western Kentucky University, Department of History
Professor July 2022-June 2024
Associate Professor August 2016-July 2022
Assistant Professor August 2011-August 2016
American University in Cairo, Department of History
Assistant Professor August 2009-May 2011
Indiana University, Department of Religious Studies
Visiting Lecturer August 2007-May 2009
EDUCATION
University of Chicago, Ph.D., East Asian Languages and Civilizations June, 2007
East Asian Cultural and Intellectual History; Chinese Historiography, Textual Criticism, and Classical Literature
University of Chicago, M.A., Philosophy of Religion June, 1998
San Diego State University, B.A., Religious Studies December, 1989
PUBLICATIONS
The Annotated Laozi, or Daodejing, State University of New York Press, 2023.
Self Cultivation in Early China, State University of New York Press, 2022.
“Love and Apotheosis in Hesse’s Siddhartha,” chapter in Teaching Religion and Literature, edited by Daniel Boscaljon and Alan Levinovitz, Oxford University Press, 2018.
Co-editor with Lin Zhipeng, 治氣養心之術—中國早期的修身方法 (The Arts of Ordering the Body and Cultivating the Mind—Methods of Early Chinese Self-Cultivation), Fudan University Press, 2017.
“《老子》中本體論的‘無’為心理上的‘思想開明’” (Ontological Emptiness as Metaphorical Open-mindedness in the Laozi), chapter in 治氣養心之術—中國早期的修身方法, edited by Paul Fischer and Lin Zhipeng, Fudan University Press, 2017, pp.215-22.
“儒家憂與静矛盾的分析” (An Analysis of the ‘Contradiction’ of Confucian Anxiety and Tranquility), 《簡帛》第十輯 (Bamboo and Silk 10 [2015]): 37-49.
“The Creation of Daoism,” Journal of Daoist Studies 8 (2015): 1-23.
Shizi: China’s First Syncretist, Columbia University Press, 2012.
“Intertextuality in the Shi Zi,” Asia Major 22.2 (2009): 1-34.
“Authentication Studies (辡偽學) Methodology and the Polymorphous Text Paradigm,” Early China 32 (2008-2009): 1-43.