Yue Wu

Yue Wu (吴岳) is a PhD candidate in East Asian Languages and Civilizations (Chinese). Her research interests are early medieval Chinese literature, history and religions. She is currently working on her dissertation, “Echoes of the Past: Resolving Displacement Through Chinese Cultural Memory from the Northern Wei to the Northern Qi,” which explores how diverse displaced groups, including both Han and non-Han elites, leveraged shared cultural memories of the Chinese past to address their social, cultural, political, and geographical displacement, as well as the formation of new cultural communities, during the Northern Wei (386–534), Eastern Wei (534–550), and Northern Qi (550–577) periods. By focusing on the interplay between displacement and cultural memory, this study reveals the strategic ways in which various groups negotiated identity, legitimacy, and power in the North. Through detailed case studies of non-Han rulers, Han cultural elites, and Southern immigrants, her research demonstrates how cultural memory served as a transformative tool to mediate displacement and construct new social orders in early medieval China. Her work traces how these groups’ experiences of social, cultural, political, and geographical displacement, shaped by interactions across ethnic and social boundaries, ultimately contributed to the formation of more cohesive social structures by drawing upon Chinese cultural memory.