This dissertation delves into the evolution of the concept of newness in early imperial China, arguing that its emergence as a positive attribute was neither self-evident nor inevitable but the result of a deliberate intellectual construction spanning from the third century BCE to first century CE. The Western Han dynasty (206 BCE–9 CE) is often perceived as a period of consolidation and stagnation, dominated by a sanctioned Confucian orthodoxy and marked by a perceived lack of innovation. Yet Han intellectuals actively theorized and valorized “newness” (xin 新), shaping a discourse that framed their own time as a moment of renewal and creative transformation.Drawing on a range of sources, including canonical texts, historiographical narratives, philosophical treatises, and court discussions, this dissertation seeks to reconstruct the intellectual and discursive landscape of the Han dynasty, uncovering perspectives that have been obscured by later historians and modern interpretive frameworks. It foregrounds key figures in the mid-to-late Western Han such as Liu Xiang 劉向 (77–6 BCE), Yang Xiong 揚雄 (53 BCE–18 CE), and Huan Tan 桓譚 (ca. 23 BCE–56 CE), illuminating how their writings contribute to the construction of newness as both a rupture from the past and a continuation of traditions. Rather than merely reflecting historical change, the discourse of newness in this period functioned as a critical agent in shaping imperial ideology, historiography, and intellectual production. This dissertation thus reinterprets Han intellectual history by demonstrating that its scholars did not merely preserve or systematize earlier traditions but conceptualized their era as one of dynamic transformation. In doing so, it contributes to broader discussions on historical consciousness and intellectual renewal in imperial China, challenging narratives that marginalize the Han in accounts of Chinese intellectual history.

This dissertation is about why there was a massive multi-chapter book in third-century BCE China—and how it was made and what impact it had—when there should really not have been one. By denaturalizing and defamiliarizing every aspect of the creation of the Lüshi Chunqiu—the first big book in Chinese history—in the 240s BCE, this study counters Eurocentric assumptions and hindsight bias prevalent in the studies of ancient textual cultures, cracks open numerous historical and philological questions, and contends that the rise of the big book as a textual form in China, though consequential in fostering a think-big sensibility instrumental to the rise and expansion of the Chinese empire, was neither early nor inevitable. Methodologically, this dissertation offers the first total history of the first Chinese big book, synthesizing data and insights from a range of fields—political history, philology, art and archeology, megaproject management, and the history of ideas, books, mathematics, and technology—and highlighting the interaction and parallel between the global, local, textual, social, ideological, technological, mathematical, and architectural on the eve of Qin’s unification of China.