David Honey

Office Hours
M 3:00PM-5:00, W 3:00-3:50; By Appointment
3071 JFSB

Biography

Dr. Honey is a Professor of Chinese. A 1980 graduate of UCLA in Oriental Languages, he received his M.A. (1984) and Ph.D degrees (1988) in Classical Chinese from the University of California, Berkeley. He has taught summers at Middlebury College in Vermont and was a Visiting Professor of Chinese at Tunghai University in Taichung, Taiwan.He has also taught at Nanjing University. His research interests include classical scholarship, the history of sinology, poetry, and Cantonese literati. His book on the history of sinology, entitled Incense at the Altar: Pioneering Sinologists and the Development of Classical Chinese Philology, was published by the American Oriental Society in 2001. In 2009 he presented an invited lecture at the Palace Museum (Forbidden CIty) in Beijing entitled “A foreign scholar looks at Chinese culture: Harmony as a key concept.” It was published by a research institute based at the Palace Museum. In 2011 he was invited to present a paper at Fu Jen University, Taipei, on the intellectual background to the European reception of knowledge concerning China over the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries; it was published in a bilingual edition by Fu Jen University in 2011. He was commissioned by the East Normal University Press of Shanghai to write a history of classical scholarship in the West, centering on homeric scholarship over the ages; this work, composed in Chinese, was published in 2012. A lengthy book manuscript in English is being published by the Chinese University of Hong Kong Press; it is entitled <em>The Southern Garden Poetry Society: Social Memory and Literati Culture in Guangdong; it will be out in early 2013. Dr. Honey is currently engaged in a longterm project on the history of classical scholarship in China. Volume One is now completed, and treats Confucius, the formation of the classics, and Confucius’ disciples. Volume Two will focus on the formation of scholarly lineages during the Western Han dynasty and the development of philology in the Eastern Han. In 2013 Dr. Honey will conduct the Fall Study Abroad program in Nanjing, PRC. Dr. Honey is a poet in classical Chinese. His 80 line poem in the ancient ballad style treats the history of the Palace Museum during the late Qing period. It has been published by the Palace Museum.   

Degrees

BA, U. of California, Los Angeles, 1980 MA, U. of California, Berkeley, 1984 PhD, U. of California, Berkeley, 1988

Interests

Dr. Honey’s chief hobby is playing the violin; his daily regimen includes an hour with Bach and Paganini. He also enjoys composing poetry in classical Chinese and exchanging verses with like-minded scholars in China. He also likes hiking and playing sports with his sons. He and his wife enjoy traveling and studying foreign languages together.