Originally trained as a political scientist, Shenda Kuang received his LL.B in Political Science from Fudan University in 2014, where he wrote his undergraduate thesis on the making of the Athenian fleet and its impact on political participation in democratic Athens. He then joined the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities (MAPH) at the University of Chicago, and earned his M.A. with a master thesis entitled “The Athenian Fleet: School of Democracy?” in 2015.
Before coming to Columbia, Kuang spent another two years in the Post-Baccalaureate Program in Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, during which he participated in Prof. Cynthia Damon’s program of editing Bellum Alexandrinum and transcribed from multiple codices. Kuang earned the Certificate in Classical Languages from the University of Pennsylvania in 2017.
One of Kuang’s interests lies in cultural contact and exchange in Hellenistic societies. In the future, he would like to make inquiries into the political and cultural changes in Near Eastern societies in the wake of Greek military expansion and presence, and explore how local elite groups interacted with dynastic powers, how concepts of identity and normativity were defined and redefined, and how cultural interactions were perceived, ratified, and exploited. Kuang is also interested in identity politics in Classical Athens, especially how socially and politically marginal groups of the polis experienced and struggled through the expansion of the Athenian Empire. Email Shenda Kuang.