Kai Sum Wong 黃啟深 is a PhD candidate in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Arizona. He received his MPhil (2017) and BA (2014) in Chinese Language and Literature from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests include Confucianism, early medieval classical studies, encyclopedic compilations (leishu), and Ming-Qing poetics.
His dissertation, titled “Contestation of Orthodoxy: The Kong Lineage’s Scholarship and Classical Studies During the Han and Wei-Jin Periods,” examines the scholarly tradition of the Kong lineage from the Han dynasty through the Wei-Jin period (ca. 2nd BCE to early 4th century CE). It explores how this tradition was constructed, transformed, and received within diverse intellectual contexts. Approaching classical studies through the lens of lineage-based scholarship, the dissertation revisits major intellectual debates, including the Zheng Xuan-Wang Su controversy and discussions of textual forgery concerning works attributed to the Confucius’s family.