Assistant Professor of Chinese
Ph.D., Indiana University
- 304 Pugh Hall
- skory@ufl.edu
- 352.392.7083
- Curriculum Vitae (pdf)
Office Hours — Spring 2022
- Monday, Wednesday, Friday: 12:55 to 1:40 p.m.
- Or by appointment
Areas of Interest
Han and medieval Chinese literature, culture, and religion (Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, and popular religion); Classical Chinese language; literature and history of East Asian medical and mantic sciences; tea history and culture; people
Biography
Stephan N. Kory (byname Steve) teaches courses on Classical Chinese and on ancient and medieval Chinese literature and culture. He holds a PhD in Chinese from Indiana University and an MA in Chinese from the University of Colorado. He was a Visiting Fellow at the International Consortium for Research in the Humanities (IKGF) at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg from mid-2016 to mid-2017, and has held visiting teaching positions as Adjunct Professor of Chinese at the College of Charleston, Assistant Professor of Chinese at Swarthmore College, Assistant Professor of Religion and Chinese Humanities at Reed College, and Lecturer in Religious Studies at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis.
His recent publications include “Ambivalent Roots and Definitive Branches: Discourses on the Holy Man Shan Daokai (d. 359? CE)” (Asia Major, 2018), “Presence in Variety: De-Trivializing Female Diviners in Medieval China” (Nan Nü: Men, Women and Gender in China, 2016), and “From Deer Bones to Turtle Shells: The State Ritualization of Pyro-Plastromancy During the Nara-Heian Transition” (Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 2015). He is currently preparing articles for East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine on the first-century CE rise and the messy medieval multiplicity of zhanhou (omen watching; prognostic observation; meteoromancy; seeing) and a chapter on the history and operations of calendrical astrology for the IKGF Handbook on Chinese Divination Techniques. Dr. Kory is currently editing this handbook, which brings together twenty senior and junior scholars from around the world to introduce sixteen of the best-attested forms of divination in Chinese history. He is also working on a monograph tentatively titled Doctors, Diviners, and Artisans in Mid-Medieval North China, which features translations and a comparative study of over a hundred biographies of late fourth to early seventh century doctors, diviners, and artisans collected together in the 554 Book of Wei; the 636 Book of Northern Qi, Book of Zhou, and Book of Sui; and the 643 History of the Northern Dynasties.
Dr. Kory is also passionate about sustainable tea cultivation in central Taiwan. He resided in Taichung for over half a decade and has long-standing friendships with cultivators and traders in that region. He thoroughly enjoys high mountain oolongs and continues to research the history, culture, and science of Chinese tea.