Her research focuses on popular religious literature of the late Qing, specifically looking at works that spread during and after the Taiping Civil War, when religious-motivated conflict threatened to collapse the empire from within even as concurrently the Second Opium War threaten the empire from without. Most of this literature appealed to traditional religious values held common among Buddhists, Daoists, and Confucians, forming a conservative backlash against destabilizing forces of religious and social change. During and after the wars, these stories were one way, among many others, that some feeling lost in the face of national crises sought stability, by rebuilding the moral foundations of their shared culture along with the reconstruction of homes, farms, and villages. Alexander is...