The East Asia Center is excited to be hosting Ari Daniel Levine, Horace Montgomery Professor of History at the University of Georgia, for his speaker series lecture "Worldly and Otherworldly Justice: Stories of Crime and Punishment from Song China."

The talk will examine cautionary case studies and intriguing anecdotal narratives from Southern Song China, where homicide cases reached the attention of imperial justice and divine authorities, who punished the perpetrators accordingly. These true-crime stories were recorded in Zheng Ke’s 鄭克 (fl. 1124-1149) legal compendium Zheyu guijian 折獄龜鑑 (Tortoise and Mirror for Judging Cases), preface 1133, and Hong Mai’s 洪邁 (1123-1202) multi-volume anecdote collection Yijian zhi 夷堅志 (Record of the Listener). Justice was simultaneously served by terrestrial bureaucratic procedure and by parallel mechanisms of cosmic justice, which functioned to restore the moral fabric of society after a violent rupture.

Join us for the event on Friday, February 21, from 3:15 - 4:30 p.m. in Gibson 211.