Faces of UNC Asheville

Grant Hardy

 

Since Grant Hardy joined the faculty in 1994, the Yale-educated specialist in Chinese history has won academic honors and written books and articles for scholarly and popular audiences. The chair of the History Department since 2000, Hardy has published The Establishment of the Han Empire and Imperial China, a volume in the Greenwood Guides to Historic Events of the Ancient World (2005); The Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Edition (2003); Enduring Ties: Poems of Family Relationships, (2003); and Worlds of Bronze and Bamboo: Sima Qian’s Conquest of History (1999). In addition, Hardy has written or revised nearly all the articles on Imperial China in The World Book Encyclopedia. 

“I am interested in how people use literature to make sense of their experience, whether that be historical, personal or religious. And perhaps it is telling that poetry shows up in all of my books...The habits I have developed in studying early Chinese writings are in line with the kind of teaching we do at UNC Asheville—a style that encourages interdisciplinary approaches.”