Please join us in welcoming Professor Robert LaFleur, Professor of History, Anthropology, and Chinese Literature at Beloit College, who explores Confucius’ fascinating ideas about relationships – Individual, Family, Society, and Government – which continue to offer us great benefit in our contemporary society.
About Confucius:
Confucius was a Chinese philosopher, poet and politician of the Spring and Autumn period who was traditionally considered the paragon of Chinese sages. Confucius’s teachings and philosophy formed the basis of East Asian culture and society, and continues to remain influential across China and East Asia as of today.
About Professor LaFleur:
Professor Robert André LaFleur is Professor of History and Anthropology at Beloit College in Wisconsin, where he has taught since 1998. Having graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Carleton College, Professor LaFleur received his doctorate from The University of Chicago’s John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought, where he combined work in three distinct fields: anthropology, history, and Chinese literature.
Professor LaFleur’s current work combines historical research using Chinese, Japanese, and Korean sources with anthropological fieldwork on each of China’s five sacred mountains. He is also doing research for an intellectual biography of Marcel Granet, a French scholar of China.
Professor LaFleur received the Charles S. Bassett Teaching Award from Colby College in 1998, as well as the James R. Underkofler Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award from Beloit College in 2001 and 2011. He was also a finalist in 2010 for the Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching Award from the American Historical Association. He is the recipient of a Millicent C. McIntosh Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and has been a frequent visiting scholar with the University of Wisconsin’s Institute for Research in the Humanities and the East-West Center in Honolulu. In 2013, Professor LaFleur gave a month-long series of lectures and seminars at Beijing University. He spent 2014 on a research fellowship at the Internationales Kolleg für Geisteswissenschaftliche Forschung (International Consortium for Research in the Humanities) in Erlangen, Germany.
Professor LaFleur is the lead author and editor of two textbooks: China: A Global Studies Handbook and a thoroughly revised and expanded version, Asia in Focus: China. He has published book chapters and articles about topics ranging from Chinese historiography, literature, and calendars to ethnicity and mythology. He also has presented dozens of research papers on topics ranging from China, Japan, and Korea to the history and anthropology of Oceania.