Michael Puett

Michael Puett, the Victor and William Fung Director, Harvard University Asia Center, is the Walter C. Klein Professor of Chinese History and Anthropology. He holds a joint appointment in the EALC and Anthropology departments. His interests focus on the inter-relations between religion, history, anthropology, and philosophy. In his research, Puett aims to bring the study of China into larger historical and comparative frameworks. He has published many articles on early Chinese history (c. 1200 B.C. - c. 755 A.D.), as well as on classical Chinese ritual, social, and political theory. Puett is the author of The Ambivalence of Creation: Debates Concerning Innovation and Artifice in Early China and To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-Divinization in Early China, as well as the co-author, with Adam Seligman, Robert Weller, and Bennett Simon, of Ritual and its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity. Puett has received multiple awards for his teaching and advising, including the Joseph R. Levenson Memorial Teaching Prize, the Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Graduate Mentoring Award, the Star Family Prize for Excellence in Advising, and the Harvard College Professorship for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. Since 2012 his General Education course, “Classical Chinese Ethical and Political Theory,” has been one of the most highly enrolled undergraduate courses at Harvard.