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A Scholarly Review of Chinese Studies in North America 北美中国研究综述 Edited by Haihui zhang zhaohui Xue Shuyong Jiang gary Lance Lugar ASIA PAST PRESENT Published by the Association for Asian Studies, Inc. Asia Past Present: New Research from AAS, Number 11 Literature: Early China Martin Kern Definition of the Field Since the 1970s, the study of early China has experienced impressive growth in North America, especially the United States but to a lesser extent also Canada. Thirty years ago few of the major institutions had specialists for early China, and those in the field were mostly focused on transmitted texts. By now the situation has completely changed. Scholars of early China occupy positions around the country, and few institutions have two or more such specialists on their faculty. Moreover, the field maintains its own journal, Early China, which was founded in 1975 as the annual publication of the Society for the Study of Early China. In addition, the Society publishes the Early China Special Monograph Series and maintains the highly informative Early China website.1 In the development of the early China field, much of the attention has shifted to the study of bronze inscriptions and excavated manuscripts, and here especially to the study of early history, intellectual history, and religion. As is often the case for ancient civilizations, these fields are closely interrelated, and literature is closely connected to all of them; strictly speaking, there is no defined field of “early Chinese literature” that could