Positions
- Associate Professor, University of British Columbia (2008–)
- Assistant Professor, University of British Columbia (2001–2008)
- Assistant Professor, Simon Fraser University (1999–2001)
- Instructor, Simon Fraser University (1996–99)
- Lecturer and Mellon Fellow, Columbia University (1995–96)
- Education and Political Reporter, Hongkong Standard (1989-90)
Education
- Ph.D., East Asian Studies, Princeton University (1999)
- A.B., Chemistry (cum laude), Princeton University (1989)
Research Interests
- Imperial and modern China
- Texts and textual transmission
- “China” and “Chineseness”
- Borderlands and boundaries
- Historiography and methodology
- Comparative early modern societies
- Culture and society of Hong Kong
Please see Research page for further information.
Work in Progress
Recollecting a Chinese Hero: The Lives of Yue Fei (1103–42)
Handbook of Hong Kong Studies
Books
The Making of the Chinese State: Ethnicity and Expansion on the Ming Borderlands (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
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- Longlisted for the 2007 International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS) Book Prize for the best English-language work in the humanities published in 2005 and 2006.
Editor, Dang dai xi fang Han xue yan jiu ji cui: Zhong gu shi juan 當代西方漢學研究集萃·中古史卷 [Selected contemporary Western scholarship on Chinese studies: The Mid-Ancient Period]. Shanghai: Shanghai gu ji chu ban she 上海古籍出版社, 2012.
Articles/Book Chapters
“Getting Real in the Name of National Security.” Beyond the Headlines 68.14 (2020).
“The Han-ness of Ming China.” In The Ming World, ed. Kenneth M. Swope, 207–20. Abingdon, Oxon, and New York, N.Y.: Routledge, 2020.
“Re-Collecting Yue Fei: Yue Ke, Jintuo cui bian, and the Making of a Chinese Hero.” In Representing Lives in China: Forms of Biography in the Ming–Qing Period 1368–1911, ed. Ihor Pidhainy, Roger Des Forges, and Grace S. Fong, 229–51. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University East Asia Program, 2018.
“The ‘National Question’ and the Stories of Hong Kong.” In Hong Kong Culture and Society in the New Millennium: Hong Kong as Method, edited by Stephen Yiu-wai Chu, 129–48. Singapore: Springer, 2017.
“Qian yan” 前言 [Introduction]. In Dang dai xi fang Han xue yan jiu ji cui: Zhong gu shi juan 當代西方漢學研究集萃·中古史卷 [Selected contemporary Western scholarship on Chinese studies: The Mid-Ancient Period], 1–14. Shanghai: Shanghai gu ji chu ban she, 2012.
“Thinking about ‘Non-Chinese’ in Ming China.” In Antiquarianism and Intellectual Life in Europe and China, 1500–1800, ed. Peter Miller and François Louis, 289–309. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012.
“The Nation and Its Logic in Early-Twentieth-Century China.” In Journal of the Canadian Historical Association (digital edition) 18.2 (2007 [published in 2008]): 104–22.
“Ming China and Its Border with Annam.” In The Chinese State at the Borders, ed. Diana Lary, 91–104. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2007.
“The Last Campaigns of Wang Yangming.” T’oung Pao 92.1–3 (2006): 101–28.
“Chinese Urbanization.” In Encyclopedia of Social History, ed. Peter Stearns, 169–70. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1994.
Reviews
Review of The Art of Being Governed: Everyday Politics in Late Imperial China, by Michael Szonyi (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017). In The Journal of Asian Studies 78.1 (2019): 182–184.
Review of Kong miao cong si yu xiang yue 孔廟從祀與鄉約 (Confucian canonization and the community compact), by Zhong Honglin [Chu Hung-lam] 朱鴻林 (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2015). In Ming Studies 77 (2018): 62–65.
Review of Ming China and Vietnam: Negotiating Borders in Early Modern Asia, by Kathlene Baldanza (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016). The American Historical Review 122.4 (2017): 1196–97.
Review of The Han: China’s Diverse Majority, by Agnieszka Joniak-Lüthi (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015). In Anthropos 111.2 (2016): 710.
Review of The Blacks of Premodern China, by Don J. Wyatt (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). Ming Studies 69 (2014): 60–62.
Review of The Mandate of Heaven and the Great Ming Code, by Jiang Yonglin (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2010). Journal of Chinese Religions 40.1 (2013): 108–110.
Review of Speaking to History: The Story of King Goujian in Twentieth-Century China, by Paul A. Cohen. China Information 23.3 (2009): 507–508.
Review of Reconfiguring Chinese Nationalism: How the Qing Frontier and Its Indigenes Became Chinese, by James Leibold. China Information 22.3 (2008): 500–502.
Review of Unbounded Loyalty: Frontier Crossings in Liao China, by Naomi Standen. The International History Review 29.4 (2007): 848–50.
Review of Cultural Centrality and Political Change in Chinese History: Northeast Henan in the Fall of the Ming, by Roger Des Forges. Canadian Journal of History 39.2 (2004): 412–14.
Review of 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, by Galvin Menzies. The Dalhousie Review 84.2 (2004): 319–21.
Review of Blood and History in China: The Donglin Factions and Its Repression, by John W. Dardess. Pacific Affairs 76.2 (2003): 291–92.
Review of Xu Xiake (1587–1641): The Art of Travel Writing, by Julian Ward. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 46.2 (2003): 247–48.
Review of The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China, by Timothy Brook. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 43.2 (2000): 213–15.
Review of Beyond the Neon Lights: Everyday Shanghai in the Early Twentieth Century, by Hanchao Lu. Canadian Journal of History 35.3 (2000): 614–16.
Review of Soulstealers: the Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768, by Philip Kuhn. Xin shi xue 新史學 [New History] (Taipei) 3.4 (1992): 161–67.
Grants and Awards
- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada) Standard Research Grant (2008–11)
- Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange Research Grant (2007–09)
- President’s Research Grant, Simon Fraser University (1999)
- Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship, Society of Fellows in the Humanities, Columbia University (1995–97)
- Young Scholar’s Fellowship, China Times Cultural Foundation (1994–95)
- Dissertation Fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS)/Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation (1993–94)
- Marjory Chadwick Buchanan Senior Thesis Prize, East Asian Studies, Princeton University (1989)
