Thomas Wilson, professor of History and the Bates and Benjamin Professor of Classical and Religious Studies, recently gave an invited talk on his new book, Confucian Gods: An Archaeology of Devotional Practice (Oxford University Press, 2026), at the East Asia Center of the University of Virginia.
The book is an intellectual and institutional history of the formation of imperial cults devoted to a pantheon of gods found in the Confucian Classics and feasted by the imperial court from the seventh to the early twentieth century. Based on research for his book, the talk, “Confucianism before Modernism,” focused on the formation of the cult devoted to the highest deity of the imperial pantheon called Vast Heaven High God.
Posted September 28, 2026
