Meet the Faculty

Michael Ing

• Assistant Professor, Department of Religious Studies

Education

• Ph.D. at Harvard University, 2011

Contact Information

Background

• 1665 Caleb Cheeshahteamuck Fellow, Harvard University (2008-2009 & 2010-2011)
• Certificate of Distinction in Teaching, Harvard University (2007, 2009 & 2010)

I study Confucianism with a particular emphasis on ritual theories in the early period (5th century BCE to 2nd century CE). I am interested in questions about the purposes of ritual and the ways in which early Confucians found their rituals susceptible to failure. More broadly speaking, I am interested in issues of vulnerability as they relate to Confucian accounts of the human condition, and Confucian attitudes toward the ability, or inability, of human beings to determine their own welfare.

My current book examines a text called the Liji (The Record of Ritual), which purports to be written by Confucius’ immediate disciples. In the book I analyze the ways in which the authors of the Liji coped with the possibility that their rituals might fail to create an ordered world. In short I argue that their concern over the dysfunction of ritual did not undermine their confidence in ritual but rather acted as a productive anxiety that created space for innovation and experimentation within their ritual tradition. This work is situated in the larger discourses of ritual studies, religious ethics, and in the growing field of Chinese philosophy.

My future research will focus on themes of death, tragedy, and the material significance of physical objects in the process of Confucian self-cultivation.

Research Interests

• Confucianism
• Ritual Theory
• Religious Ethics
• Theories of Religion
• Chinese Thought

Courses Recently Taught

• Introduction to Chinese Religions
• Religions of Asia
• Fate and Vulnerability in Confucianism
• Neo-Confucianism

Publication Highlights

• "The Ancients did not Fix Their Graves: Failure in Early Confucian Ritual." Philosophy East & West 62.2 (April 2012): 223-245.
• The Dysfunction of Ritual in Early Confucianism. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming October 2012.