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About

David Lurie

Wm. Theodore & Fanny Brett de Bary / Class of '41 Collegiate Professor of Asian Humanities & Associate Professor of Japanese History & Literature, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University

Governing Board Member, SOF/Heyman, Columbia University (2012–2015)

Headshot of David Lurie

David Lurie, associate professor of Japanese history and literature, received his B.A. from Harvard (1993) and his M.A. (1996) and PhD. (2001) from Columbia. His first book, on the development of writing systems in Japan through the Heian period, is entitled Realms of Literacy: Early Japan and the History of Writing (Harvard University Asia Center, 2011). Other publications include “The Development of Japanese Writing,” in The Shape of Script: How and Why Writing Systems Change (SAR Press, 2012); “Language, Writing, and Disciplinarity in the Critique of the ‘Ideographic Myth’: Some Proleptical Remarks,” Language & Communication 26 (2006); and “On the Inscription of the Hitomaro Poetry Collection: Between Literary History and the History of Writing,” Man’yoshu kenkyu 26 (2004). In addition to the history of writing systems and literacy, his research interests include the literary and cultural history of premodern Japan, the Japanese reception of Chinese literary, historical, and technical writings, the development of Japanese dictionaries and encyclopedias, the history of linguistic thought, and Japanese mythology.