Education: National University of Singapore BA (Hons); Cornell University MA, PhD
Biography:
Clarence Lee received a BA with honors in Japanese Studies from the National University of Singapore and his MA and PhD from Cornell University. As a Japan Foundation Fellow, he was a visiting scholar at the Department of Japanese Literature at Sophia University. His doctoral dissertation, Medicating the Gods: Kokugaku, Nature, and the Body examines the relation between kokugaku scholars based in the kamigata region and the rise of rational empiricism as a paradigm for knowledge in the Mid-Eighteenth century. In particular, the dissertation traced the shifts in the ways language, the human body, and nature came to be intertwined in a complex network of relations that redefined the way knowledge came to be produced. In addition to revising his dissertation for publication, he is currently working on two articles. The first concerns the intersections between supernatural literature and Sinitic medical discourses in Tokugawa Japan, while the second is a survey of medical eating disorders in Early Modern Japan.
Publications
“Igaku to Kaidan – Igaku-teki gensetsu ni motozuku Kai’i no Gensen to Kishitsu no Shindan,” in Kaidan wo kaku, yomu, ed. Katsumata Motoi (Forthcoming from Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai).
Edited Annotation and Transcription (honkoku) of “Miscellaneous Tales of Falsity and Truth” (Kyojitsu Zatsudan Shū) in Edo Kaidan Bungei Meisaku-sen(Forthcoming from Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai).
Co-author with Kigoshi Osamu, “About non-Japanese academic writings on Ueda Akinari,” in Ueda Akinari Kenkyū Jiten (A Research Guide Book to Ueda Akinari). Tokyo: Kasama Shoin, 2016.
Research Interests
Early modern Japanese intellectual history, literature and philosophy; East Asian medical history; Ming/Qing literature; Translation theory; Critical Theory; Literary Theory; Postcolonial Theory