Chang'an, counterpart to Rome and Alexandria with Michael Nylan

Ask an Archaeologist, Episode 6: Chang'an, counterpart to Rome and Alexandria with Michael Nylan

Michael Nylan (Ph.D. '83) began her teaching career at Bryn Mawr College, in the History Department, with an affiliation with the Growth and Structure of Cities program and Political Science; she arrived in Berkeley shortly after 9/11. Now she writes in three main academic disciplines: the history of early China (roughly 300 BC-AD 300), early Chinese philosophy, and the art and archaeology of China (especially urban archaeology). She has an abiding interest in the use and abuse of history in the modern period, as well as in the politics of the common good, the "logics of legitimacy" inscribed in the implied social contracts forged at different times and places between the rulers and ruled at different times and places. Her current projects include a reconstruction of a Han-era Documents classic, writing a general-interest study of the "Four Fathers of History," (Herodotus and Thucydides), Sima Qian and Ban Gu) and compiling a study of the politics of the common good in early China.