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What is a ghost? This talk will consider the history of the ghost in comparative perspective, and then take the particular case of the ghost as an emergent phenomenon in early medieval Chinese writings to illustrate how the ghost both represented a challenge to epistemological systems and yet was captured within epistemological systems. I will discuss three early examples of haunting that collectively demonstrate how the figure of the ghost called—and continues to call—into question the stable ontology of the human, and then turn to a final example that foregrounds the mediality of the ghost, and therefore, of the human.
Jack W. Chen is Director of the Institute of the Humanities and Global Cultures (IHGC), Chair of the Department of East Asian Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, and Professor of Chinese Literature at the University of Virginia,. He is the author of two monographs on classical Chinese literature and co-editor of three books, including Literary Information in China: A History (Columbia University Press, 2021. He is currently completing a monograph on ghosts, poetry, and mediality, and is co-editing the six-volume A Cultural History of Chinese Literatures (Bloomsbury, 2025 or 2026) with Carlos Rojas. At IHGC, he also directs Reading Lab, has helped launch the Personhoods Lab and Games Lab, and oversees the “For the Humanities” lecture series. His next project will probably be about cats.