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Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies

Wolfgang Behr

Wolfgang Behr, Prof. Dr.

  • Professor of Chinese Studies with a focus on traditional China
  • Director Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies
Phone
+41 44 634 31 80
Room number
ZUB 4-412

Short CV

Wolfgang Behr (born 1965 in Göttingen, FRG), read Sinology, Slavic Studies, Indo-European and Comparative Linguistics and Sociology in Frankfurt/Main, Shenyang, Changchun and Moscow. He receied his M.A. in 1991 with a thesis on Sanskrit-Chinese lexicography, his Ph.D. in 1997 with a dissertation on "Rhyming Bronze Inscriptions and the Origins of Chinese End-Rhyme Versificaton", and his Habilitation in 2008 on "Phonological and Morphological Studies in Early Chinese History of Thought and Culture". Between 1991–1997 he was Teaching and Research Assistant at J.W. Goethe-Universität Frankfurt a.M., Research Fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden, in 1998, Research Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Uppsala in 2005, and University Lecturer (Akademischer Rat) at Ruhr-University Bochum 1998–2008. Since September 2008 he is Professor at UZH. He held visting professorships in Hong Kong in 2014 (at Chinese University) and in 2017 (at The Jao Tsung-i Academy) and was Senior Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at Kyôto University in 2022. Between 2018 and 2022 he served as Dean of Research at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of UZH. 2022 Senior Visiting Fellow, Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Kyôto. Director IAOS 2023–

Research Interests

  • Old Chinese phonology, morphology, etymology & paleography
  • Sino-Tibetan linguistics; external contacts of Old and Middle Chinese
  • Premodern Chinese dialectology
  • History of Chinese philology; epistemological foundations of historical linguistics in China, conceptual and cultural history, Philosophy of language beyond Standard Average European
  • Pre-imperial Chinese archaeology & history; Early Chinese historiography
  • Sanskrit-Chinese translation & lexicography
  • Modern Chinese translation of Western experimental literature, translatability, puns, metrics
  • Grammatology of complex non-alphabetic writing-systems

Publications, Papers, Talks, Conferences

See for a periodically updated list http://uzh.academia.edu/WolfgangBehr/ or query for "Wolfgang Behr" on zenodo.org.

Recent Publications

  • “Tracing variation in Old Chinese: what, if anything, was “yayan 雅言”?, Journal of Chinese Linguis­tics 51.2 (2023): 287-348.

  • (with R. Suter & P. Lukicheva, eds.), Vision and Visuality in Buddhism and Beyond, special issue of Asiatische Studien 74.4, 2021, pp. 753–1101.

  • “Inscription Placement, Ineffability of Language and Discourses on Hiddenness: Marginalia on the Prehistory of Subtlety (wei) in Early China”, in: Henriette Hofmann, Barbara Schellewald, Sophie Schweinfurth, Gerald Wildgruber eds., Enthüllen und Verbergen in der Vormoderne / Reveal­ing and Concealing in the premodern period, München: W. Fink, 2021, pp. 87–126.

  • “Gesichtsverlust 3.0”, in: Geschichte der Gegenwart, 18.IV.2021, https://geschichtedergegen­wart.ch/gesichtsverlust-3-0/

  • (with Manuel Widmer, Matthias Jenny, Balthasar Bickel), “Morphological structure can escape re­duction effects from mass admixture of second language speakers”, in: Studies in Language 45.4 (2021), pp. 707–752.

  • (with R. Suter & L. Indraccolo, eds.): The Gongsunlongzi and Other Neglected Texts: Aligning Philo­sophical and Philological Perspectives [Welten Ost­asiens], Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020, 575 pp. https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110587814/html

Projects

Ph.D. Projects Currently (Co-)Supervised

Potential Ph.D. students kindly contact me with a project outline, a detailed CV and a transcript of records of your M.A.

Courses Currently Taught at the University of Zürich

Vorlesungsverzeichnis

V-Nr Course Start / End Date Lecturers Room
0210
280-020a
from 20 Feb 2024
to 30 May 2024
Tue 12:15-13:45, Thu 10:15-12:00 Wolfgang Behr ZUB-4-416
2954
279-601a
from 1 Feb 2024
to 31 Jul 2024
as announced or arranged Wolfgang Behr
2950
279-700a
from 1 Feb 2024
to 31 Jul 2024
as announced or arranged Wolfgang Behr
2130
280-003a
from 1 Feb 2024
to 31 Jul 2024
as announced or arranged Wolfgang Behr
3271
280-105a
from 23 Feb 2024
to 31 May 2024
Fri 08:00-09:45 Wolfgang Behr ZUB-3-314
0712
280-106a
from 1 Feb 2024
to 31 Jul 2024
as announced or arranged Wolfgang Behr
1196
280-401a
from 1 Feb 2024
to 31 Jul 2024
to be announced Wolfgang Behr
3469
280-501a
from 1 Feb 2024
to 31 Jul 2024
as announced or arranged Wolfgang Behr
1495
280-592a
from 1 Feb 2024
to 31 Jul 2024
as announced or arranged Wolfgang Behr
3887
280-683a
from 1 Feb 2024
to 31 Jul 2024
as announced or arranged Wolfgang Behr
1195
280-801a
from 1 Feb 2024
to 31 Jul 2024
as announced or arranged Wolfgang Behr
3337
280-803a
from 1 Feb 2024
to 31 Jul 2024
as announced or arranged Wolfgang Behr
3879
280-804a
from 1 Feb 2024
to 31 Jul 2024
as announced or arranged Wolfgang Behr
0632
280-590a
from 20 Feb 2024
to 28 May 2024
Tue 10:15-12:00 Wolfgang Behr ZUB-4-410