Upcoming events

Past events

Recent interviews (as a guest on podcasts, etc)
  • “On creative academic work.” Interview w/ Carrie Jenkins for the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies podcast, July 2021 (via Zoom).

Invited lectures, seminars, and keynotes
  • “Insomniac History: Sleep, Time, and the Archive.” Invited lecture, series for the Center for Print, Networks, and Performance, Carnegie Mellon University, 5 Sept 2023.
  • “Insomniac History: On the Art of Recognition in the Making of Health and its Translations.” Invited talk, 2022-23 Speaker Series in the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Program in the History of Medicine, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (via Zoom), 11 May 2023.
  • “Knowing (and) the Bencao gangmu.” Invited talk, East Asian Studies Center and History Department, Ohio State University (via Zoom), 11 April 2023.
  • “On Fixing the Unfixable: Goethe’s Archive of Silhouettes.” The Goethe-Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts: Transgressive, Eccentric, and Cross-Disciplinary Thinking, Pitt, 31 March 2023.
  • “Translating Early Modern China.” Book talk, Asian Studies Center, Pitt, 3 March 2023.
  • “The Elizabeths: Being a Historian in the Time of COVID.” Invited talk, University of Nevada-Reno series “History in the Present,” 1 February 2023: (via Zoom).
  • Huntington Library workshop, 8-9 October 2022 (via Zoom).
  • “Epistemology” group member, Global Asias Summer Institute, Global Asias Initiative, Penn State University, 6-10 June 2022 (via Zoom).
  • “Illegible Cities: Translating Early Modern China.” “China and the World” SEUSS-FLIC conference. Invited keynote, Vanderbilt University, 12 February 2022 (via Zoom).
  • “How to Come Apart: Decomposing A History of Translation in China.” Invited speaker, Science and Technology in Asia Seminar Series, Harvard University, 14 December 2021 (via Zoom).
  • “Bringing historical strawberries to dinner.” Tea Time Talk with Sabine Wilms, 23 October 2021 (via Zoom).
  • “Illegible Cities: Translating Early Modern China.” The 2021 Leslie Brooks Lecture, Durham University, 24 June 2021 (via Zoom).
  • “Illegible Cities: Translating Early Modern China.” Invited speaker, “China, Inner Asia, and the World: Mongol and Qing Empires in Comparative Perspectives” seminar series, Weatherhead East Asia Institute, 16 June 2021 (via Zoom).
  • “On Collaboration” (with Dianna Frid and Cesáreo Moreno). DePaul Art Museum public event, 20 May 2021 (via Zoom).
  • “Three-Body Problem.” Guest lecture for course on “Sad Planets,” The New School for Social Research, 31 March 2021 (via Zoom).
  • Invited speaker for discussion of Translating Early Modern China: Illegible Cities, University of Minnesota, 09 February 2021 (via Zoom).
  • Invited roundtable participant, Virtual HistSTM forum on History of Science and Area Studies, 27 November 2020.
  • “Sleeping Through History: Time and Insomnia in a Manchu Translator’s Archive.” Invited speaker, Rutgers University, 16 November 2020 (via Zoom).
  • Invited speaker and workshop leader, graduate writing workshop, University of Toronto, 17 April 2020. [Event postponed due to pandemic]
  • “Insomniac History: Translating Manchu Time.” Invited speaker, Silk Road Imaginaries conference, Paris, 26-27 March 2020. [Event postponed due to pandemic]
  • Invited roundtable participant, “Scientific Babel and the Coherence of Region: Asia in the History of Science.” Harvard University, 19 March 2020. [Event postponed due to pandemic]
  • “Illegible Cities: Translating Early Modern China.” Provost’s Inaugural Lecture, University of Pittsburgh, 06 February 2020.
  • Invited speaker for several events, Biology and Society program, Arizona State University, 19-21 November 2019.
  • Invited speaker, Association for Asian Studies Emerging Fields Workshop: Technology in East Asia (Paris, France), 17-18 October 2019 (via Skype).
  • Invited co-leader of seminar, Genealogies of Modernity, University of Pennsylvania, 17-21 June 2019.
  • “Gestures: On Writing Between the Discipline and ‘the Public’.” Invited speaker, History Department, Boston College, 22 March 2019.
  • “Prepositional Bodies: Manchu Medicine in the Early Modern World.” Invited speaker, Hannah History of Medicine and Medical Humanities Speaker Series, McMaster University, 13 March 2018.
  • “Reading with Worms: On Fictioning as Historical Practice.” Invited speaker, Religious Studies program, McMaster University, 12 March 2018.
  • “Remixing History.” Invited speaker, Comparative Literature luncheon series, Pennsylvania State University, 18 February 2019.
  • Invited guest seminar leader, Philosophy seminar (with Carrie Jenkins), University of British Columbia, February 2019 (via Skype).
  • “Bodies in Translation: The Manchu Anatomy and Reading as Historical Practice.” Invited speaker, Chabraja Center for Historical Studies, Northwestern University, 15 January 2019. 
  • Invited speaker, Early Modern Asia Seminar, Harvard University, 30 November 2018.
  • Invited speaker, Forum for the History of Science in Asia, History of Science Society Annual Meeting, Seattle, 02 November 2018.
  • “On Beginnings.” Invited speaker, “Black/Brown/Queer: geographies and Temporalities of the History of Science,” History of Science Society Annual Meeting, Seattle, 03 November 2018.
  • “Remixing History.” Invited speaker, “Disciplines of Experiment,” Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, University of Chicago, 18-19 October 2018.
  • Invited workshop leader, “The Open Humanities: Voicing Generous Spaces in Academia.” Cornell University, 12 October 2018.
  • “Prepositional Bodies: Translating Corporeal Normality Across Early Modern Eurasia.” Invited speaker, Syracuse University, 11 October 2018.
  • “A Song Mumbled in My Sleep: Translating a Manchu Trickster Poet.” Invited speaker, Institute for Chinese Studies lecture series, Ohio State University, 28 September 2018.
  • “a feeling of if: Making Stories with Manchu Materia Medica.” Invited speaker, When East Meets West symposium, Columbus, Ohio, 28 September 2018.
  • Invited speaker, School of Art and Art History ART 520 (Seminar in Contemporary Theory – Certain and Unknown: On Death (And Art); Prof. Dianna Frid), University of Illinois-Chicago, 26 September 2018.
  • Invited workshop leader, Early Modern Conversions conference, Montreal, 22-26 August 2018.
  • “Illegible Cities: Translating Early Modern China.” Invited speaker, China Lecture Series, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, Rutgers University, 12 April 2018.
  • “Illegible Cities: Grammar, Translation, Desire.” Invited speaker, Columbia University International History Workshop, 21 February 2018.
  • Invited speaker and seminar leader, “Objects of Conversion” conference, UCLA, 15-17 February 2018.
  • Invited speaker, “Trans-Global South Conversations on Science and Technology,” Society for the History of Technology Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, 25-29 October 2018.
  • Invited speaker, “Body and Cosmos in China: An Interdisciplinary Symposium in Honor of Nathan Sivin,” University of Pennsylvania, 14-15 October 2017.
  • “Translating Manchu Bodies into Household Spaces.” “Translating Medicine: Practices” workshop, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, 23-24 June 2017.
  • Invited workshop participant, “What History Could Have Been 3,” The New School for Social Research, 29-30 April 2017.
  • “Prepositional Bodies: Sensation and Translation in Manchu.” Invited speaker, Washington University St. Louis, 13 April 2017.
  • “Manchu Skin: Metamorphic Instruments and Translated Anatomy.” Invited speaker, “Early Modern Techne,” Yale University, 07 April 2017.
  • Invited speaker and workshop participant, “Animals in World History” (Harvard/Max Planck Institute for the History of Science). Harvard University, 27-28 March 2017.
  • “Look at the Fish: Decomposing Global Histories of Science.” Keynote speaker, “Globalization of Science in the Middle East, 18th-20th Centuries,” College of the Holy Cross, 24-25 March 2017.
  • Invited speaker, “Ends of Interdisciplinarity.” MLA Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, 05-08 January 2017.
  • “Illegible Cities: Ch. 4.” Critical China Studies working group, University of Toronto, 07 December 2016.
  • “Metamorphoses: Archival Fictioning and the Historian’s Craft.” Invited speaker, University of Toronto, 06 December 2016.
  • Invited participant mentor on socially engaging through podcasting and fiction, Joint Caucus of Socially Engaged Philosophers and Historians of Science mentoring lunch, History of Science Society Annual Meeting, Atlanta, 05 November 2016.
  • Invited speaker, “Beyond the Scientific Revolution” symposium, University of Minnesota, 21 October 2016.
  • “Fictioning Early Modernity: Storytelling with the History of Science.” Invited speaker, Department of History of Science, Harvard University, 13 October 2016.
  • Invited performer, 2016 ESTAR(SER) Joint Symposium, Museum of Jurassic Technology, 10 September 2016.
  • Invited speaker, Early Modern Conversions team meeting, University of Michigan, 25-27 May 2016.
  • “Illegible Cities: Translating Early Modern China.” Invited keynote, Asian Studies Northwest Graduate Student Conference, University of Oregon, 13-14 May 2016.
  • “A Song Sung Drunkenly: Jakdan and The Poetry of Translation.” Invited speaker, Conference in Manchu Studies, University of Michigan, 05-08 May 2016.
  • Invited workshop participant, “Putting History and Philosophy of Life Sciences to Work,” Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 22-23 April 2016.
  • Invited speaker, “Cartography and Spatial Thinking from Humanism to the Humanities,” Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, 24-25 March 2016.
  • Invited performer, “The Trochilus Exercise in the Twentieth Century,” Gwangju, Korea, 12 March 2016.
  • Invited commentator-at-large, “Early Modern China in the Late Imperial World,” Johns Hopkins University, 15-16 October 2015.
  • “The Elizabeths: Elemental Historians.” Invited speaker, “What History Could Have Been: The Sciences and Anti-Sciences of the Past,” Princeton University, 21 May 2015.
  • “…implying, naturally, the horses: Latinizing Manchu Grammar with Ferdinand Verbiest.” Invited speaker, “New Directions in the Cultural and Intellectual History of China” workshop, New York University, 01-03 May 2015.
  • “The City as Phantasm.” Sponsored by Cabinet Magazine and the Liberal Studies Program of the New School for Social Research, New York City, 29 April 2015.
  • Invited speaker, “Now, if I ran this place…,” National Humanities Center, 16 April 2015.
  • “Magical History, a Lion’s Tail, and a Lock of Hair.” Invited speaker, “Repurposing Magic: A Colloquium in Eight Lessons,” University of Chicago, 10 April 2015.
  • Invited speaker, “50 Years of Qing Studies: A Conversation with Past and Current Editors of Late Imperial China” roundtable, Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Chicago, 27 March 2015.
  • Invited workshop participant, Casebooks Project Launch, Bodleian Centre for the Study of the Book, Oxford University, 12-13 March 2015.
  • “Prepositioning History.” Invited speaker, Vancouver Institute for Social Research, Or Gallery, Vancouver, 09 March 2015.
  • “Paper Dolls: An Architectonics of Translation in Early Modern Eurasia.” Invited speaker, Sawyer Seminar on Critical Silk Road Studies, Georgetown University, 29 January 2015.
  • “From Circulation to Relation: Translating New Materialities for the History of Science.” Invited speaker, “Bodies, Objects and Knowledge From the Age of Empire: Global Histories and Beyond,” Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, 16-17 December 2014.
  • “Exercises in Style: Experiments in Writing the History of Science.” Invited speaker, University of Wisconsin History of Science Colloquium, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 05 December 2014.
  • “Ha, Habit, Habitat: Translating Sensation at the Kangxi Court.” Invited speaker, History of Science Colloquium, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 05 December 2014.
  • Invited speaker on “Podcasting.” Joint Caucus of Socially Engaged Philosophers and Historians of Science reception, History of Science Society Annual Meeting, Chicago, 06 November 2014.
  • “trees and stones are only what they are: Translating Ming Empire in the Fifteenth Century.” Invited speaker, “Ming: Courts and Contacts 1400-1450,” British Museum, London, 09-10 October 2014.
  • “Death of Ideas, Words and Objects.” Invited speaker, DeathPicnic public storytelling event, Stanley Park, Vancouver, 25 August 2014.
  • “#Hashtag Histories of Science: Remaking Locality, Rethinking the Global.” Invited speaker, “Globalising the History of Science” workshop, Singapore, 21-22 August 2014.
  • “Hiyong hiyong seme: Moving Sound Across Early Modern Eurasia.” Invited speaker, “Itineraries of Materials,” Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, 09-11 July 2014.
  • “Liquidity: Making Drugs and Making Time in Manchu Medical Recipes.” Invited speaker, “Testing Drugs and Trying Cures in the Early Modern World,” Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, June 2014.
  • “Reading Spoken Manchu.” Invited speaker, “Reading, Information, and Quantification in Traditional China” workshop, UCLA, 30-31 May 2014.
  • “Following Ghosts: Skinning Science Across Early Modern Eurasia.” Invited speaker, “Empires of Knowledge” workshop, Stanford University, 02-03 May 2014.
  • “Feet, Sorcerers, and Sea Slugs: Cursing Translation in 18th Century China.” Invited speaker, Center for Chinese Studies, University of California-Berkeley, 06 December 2013.
  • “Last Night A Historian Saved My Life: Science, Sampling, and the Art of the DJ.” Invited speaker, Center for Science, Technology, Medicine, and Society colloquia series, University of California-Berkeley, 05 December 2013.
  • “Making ‘Mongolian’ Nature: Medicinal Plants and Qing Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century.” Invited speaker, “The Botany of Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century,” Dumbarton Oaks, 04-05 October 2013.
  • “Listing Bodies: Early Modern Manchu Medicine and the Inventory as Epistemic Form.” Invited speaker, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, 12 August 2013.
  • “Berenice’s Hair: Constellating Scientific Objects Across Eurasia.” Invited speaker, “Materiality: Objects and Idioms in Historical Studies of Science and Technology,” York University, 03-04 May 2013.
  • “Fu Manchu: The Music of Natural History Translation Across Qing Texts.” Invited speaker, “Nature Observed: The History of Natural History” workshop, University of South Carolina, 12 April 2013.
  • “Bones, Breath, and Breast: Translating Experience in Qing Natural History.” Invited speaker, University of Tennessee, 04 April 2013.
  • “Notes Toward a History of Sameness: Manchu Words, Qing Bodies, Translated Objects.” Invited speaker, China Humanities Seminar, Harvard University, 25 February 2013.
  • “The People of Paper: Articulating Manchu Skeletons.” Invited speaker, Duke University, 20 February 2013.
  • “Once Upon a Recipe: Pharmaceutical Storytelling Across Early Modern Eurasia.” University of Oregon, 13 February 2013.
  • “Feeling Facts, Smelling Arguments, and Tasting History.” Invited speaker, University of Oregon undergraduate honors college, 13 February 2013.
  • “Traduttore, Oktosi: Qing Bodies After ‘Chinese Medicine’.” Invited speaker, University of Michigan, 24 January 2013.
  • Invited leader of pedagogy seminar, University of Michigan, 24 January 2013.
  • “The One Who Claws at His Names: A Story in Phoenixes and Feathers.” Invited speaker as part of “An Afternoon of Fauna: From Ants to Whales,” New Museum, New York City, 12 January 2013.
  • “Turbulence: China, Objects, and Multiplicity.” Invited speaker, “China after Comparison” workshop, Pennsylvania State University, 07-08 September 2012.
  • “Taking Names: Translating Qing Bodies.” Invited speaker, Medicine, Body, and Practice Workshop, University of Chicago, 09 May 2012.
  • “Tilting Toward the Light: The Translators’ College in Early Modernity.” Invited speaker, “Re-envisioning Migration: The Past and the Present,” Cornell University East Asia Program, 27-28 April 2012.
  • “Translating the Medieval World.” Invited speaker, “Global Middle Ages,” University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 12-14 April 2012.
  • Qinding Xiyu tongwenzhi. Invited to lead a text-reading seminar, Cornell Classical Chinese Colloquium, Cornell University, February 2012.
  • “Regional Perspectives on Medical Commodities: West Asia, Central Asia, and China.” Invited speaker, “Medical Commodities in Early Modern East Asia (1550-1850)” workshop, Princeton University, 11-12 February 2012.
  • Invited workshop participant, “Early Modern Asian Medical Classics and Medical Philology” Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies Research Cluster workshop, Princeton University, 10 February 2012.
  • “Poison and Oil: Translating the Translators in Early Modern Science.” Invited speaker, “Translation and the Sciences,” Columbia University, 21 October 2011.
  • “Field Guide to Obscurity: A Translator’s World History of Early Modernity.” Invited keynote address, Northwest Regional World History Association Annual Meeting, Simon Fraser University, October 2011.
  • “Recipes for Exchange: Translating Bodies in Early Modern China.” Invited speaker, Workshop in History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania, 14 March 2011.
  • “You Don’t Mess with the Yohan: Cotton, Objects, and Becoming Vegetal in Early Modern China.” Invited plenary lecture, “Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Ethics and Objects in the Early Modern and Medieval Periods,” Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute, George Washington University, 10-12 March 2011.
  • “Full. Empty. Stop. Go.: Translating Miscellany in Early Modern China.” Invited speaker, “Early Modern Translation: Theory, History, Practice” workshop, Folger Institute, 04-05 March 2011.
  • “Illegible Cities: Translating Nature in Early Modern China.” Invited Klopsteg Lecture, Science in Human Culture Program at Northwestern University, 11 October 2010.
  • “Inventing Ginseng: Creating and Translating Objects in Early Modern Chinese Materia medica.” Invited plenary lecture, Korean Association of Medical History expo, Semyung University, Jecheon, Korea, 02-03 October 2010.
  • “Seeing Things: Dictionaries and Translated Perception in Early Modern China.” Invited speaker, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (Dept. II), Berlin, 04 May 2010.
  • Invited paper commentary, “Borderlines and Intersections: Exploring Science and Society in Song China,” Institute for the History of Natural Science, Beijing, 12-15 April 2010.
  • “Surface Tension: Objectifying Ginseng in Chinese Early Modernity.” Invited speaker, “Early Modern Things” workshop, Stanford University, 29-30 January 2010.
  • “The Crucible: Ideas of the Normal in Early Modern Bencao.” Invited speaker in “History of Medicine in East Asia” series, Stanford University, November 2008.
  • “Sino-nyms: Cordyceps, Colonial Chinese Medicine, and Historical Practice.” Invited speaker, Cornell East Asia Program colloquium, October 2008.
  • “Huihui yaofang: The Islamic Formulary.” Invited to lead a text-reading seminar, Cornell Classical Chinese Colloquium, Cornell University, October 2008.
  • “Bolatu’s Pharmacy: Theriac in Early Modern China.” Invited speaker, University of Minnesota, September 2008.
  • “Recipe: Forms of Circulation in Chinese-Islamic Medical Exchange.” Invited speaker, “History of Science/History of Knowledge: Interdisciplinary Perspectives of Young Researchers,” Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, March 2008.
  • “Recipe: Forms of Circulation and Scents of Place in Chinese-Arabic Medical Exchange.” Invited speaker, “Circulation and Locality in Early Modern Science,” UCLA/Clark Library, October 2007.
  • “Eating the ‘Two-Legged Sheep’: Man, Nature and Analogy in Early Modern Chinese Natural History.” Invited speaker, Cabinet of Natural History seminar, Cambridge University, February 2006.
  • “Naturalizing the naga: Dragons in the Bencao gangmu and the Wuzazu.” Led a text-reading seminar at the Needham Research Institute, March 2006.
  • “On Yeti and Being Just: Carving the Borders of Humanity in Early Modern China.” Needham Research Institute, January 2006.
  • “How to Do Things with Worms: Resemblance, Metamorphosis and the Epistemology of the Bencao gangmu.” Invited speaker, “Issues in the History of the Great Compendium of Materia Medica,” Cambridge University, December 2003.

Conference presentations
  • Roundtable on podcasting, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo (via Zoom), 13 May 2023.
  • Commentator, “The Senses in the Archive: Attention, Experience, Form” panel, History of Science Society Annual Meeting (via Zoom), 20 November 2021.
  • “Falling Asleep in Manchu: Insomniac Translation as Historical Practice.” Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Boston, 20 March 2020. [panel cancelled due to pandemic]
  • “The Gesture of Filming.” Visualizing Theory Conference, City University of New York, 10-11 May 2018.
  • “The Gesture of Translation: Moving Manchu Bodies.” Global Asias 4, Pennsylvania State University, 31 March-01 April 2017.
  • Discussant, “Vital Knowledge and Lively Carnality: Inspirations from the Work of Judith Farquhar on Medicine, Bodies, and Vitalities,” American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Minneapolis, 16-20 November 2016.
  • “Fragments for a History of Substance: The Elizabeths.” Oscillations of Gender and Genre Symposium, University Galleries of Illinois State University, 09-12 November 2016.
  • Roundtable participant, “Reaching Beyond the Ivory Tower,” History of Science Society Annual Meeting, San Francisco, 20 November 2015.
  • Roundtable participant, “Translation as an Epistemic Tool in the History of Science,” History of Science Society Annual Meeting, San Francisco, 20 November 2015.
  • Roundtable participant, “Entangled Histories of Early Modern Translation, Empire, and Knowledge Production,” Scientiae Conference, Victoria College, University of Toronto, 27-29 May 2015.
  • Roundtable participant, “Globalizing Scientiae,” Scientiae Conference, Victoria College, University of Toronto, 27-29 May 2015.
  • Northwest China Forum Meeting, University of Oregon, 25-26 April 2015.
  • Roundtable participant, “Translating Qing Voice: Object, Process, Relation,” American Historical Association Annual Meeting, New York City, 02-05 January 2015.
  • “Translated Kinds.” “History of Science and the Ontological Turn” roundtable, History of Science Society Annual Meeting, Chicago, 08 November 2014.
  • “The Body Sonic in Manchu Medical Texts.” Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, 27-30 March 2014.
  • “The Poker, The Slicer, The Ripper: Opening and Closing Translated Bodies in Inner Asian Medicine in the Nineteenth Century.” American Society for Environmental History Annual Meeting, San Francisco, 13 March 2014.
  • “Hoso hasa: Manchu Science and the Sound of Shaking Paper.” Lecture delivered as part of the plenary panel of the History of Science Society Annual Meeting, Boston, 21 November 2013.
  • Roundtable participant, “What was global in the Middle Ages?” International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, 09-12 May 2013.
  • “Tilting Toward the Light: Translating the Medieval World on the Eurasian Frontier.” Medieval Academy, Knoxville, 04-06 April 2013.
  • “Speaking in Tongues: Translation as Bodywork in Late Medieval and Early Modern China.” History of Science Society Annual Meeting, San Diego, 15-18 November 2012.
  • “Da Ming and Necessity: Creating China Through Early Modernism.” Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Toronto, March 2012.
  • Co-chair and co-organizer, “Engaging with Asia: Responsibilities and Opportunities in the History of Science and Technology” roundtable, Society for the History of Technology/History of Science Society Annual Meeting, Cleveland, November 2011.
  • “Oktolombi, Orolombi: Translating Translated Drugs at the Manchu Court.” “From Scroll to Screen: Translation and Reading from Ancient to Modern” conference, University of British Columbia, 03 October 2011.
  • “Reading in the Margins: Learning Foreign Languages in Late Imperial China.” Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Honolulu, April 2011.
  • “Translating Treasure in Early Modern China.” “Negotiating Trade” conference, Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Binghamton University, 24 September 2010.
  • “Radicle Translation: Synonymy and the Roots of Resemblance in Qing Natural History.” History of Science Society Annual Meeting, Phoenix, November 2009.
  • “An Atlas of Herbal Tectonics: Mapping Materia Medica in Early Modern China.” Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Chicago, March 2009.
  • “The Order of Things: Translating Chinese and Arabic Nature in Early Modernity.” History of Science Society Annual Meeting, Pittsburgh, November 2008.
  • “Making Logic Local: Notes for a Comparative History of Reason.” “Places of Knowledge: Relocating Science, Technology and Medicine” conference, Cornell University, October 2008.
  • “Winter Worm, Summer Grass: Historicizing Identity in Colonial Chinese Medicine.” “Crossing Colonial Historiographies: Histories of Colonial and Indigenous Medicines in Transnational Perspective” conference, St. Anne’s College, Oxford, September 2008.
  • “Medics in a World of Strangers: Recipes for Exchange in Early Modern Chinese Medicine.” The 12th Annual International Conference on the History of Science in East Asia, Johns Hopkins University, July 2008.
  • “The Paper Medicine Chest: Empire, Forms of Transmission, and Early Modern Chinese-Islamic Medical Exchange.” Society for Ming Studies, Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Atlanta, April 2008.
  • “Bolatu’s Pharmacy: Poison, Pig Bile, and ‘Foreign’ Recipes in Early Modern China.” Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, Chicago, April 2008.
  • “Winter Worm, Summer Grass: Inventing ‘Traditional Medicine’ in Modern China.” American Society for Environmental History Annual Meeting, Boise, March 2008.
  • “Offspring of the Elements: Insects and Metamorphosis in Early Modern China.” “Plants and Insects in the Early Modern World,” University of Southern California-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute, April 2005.
  • “The Monkey of the Inkpot: Natural History and its Transformations in Early Modern China.” Society for Ming Studies, Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Chicago, April 2005.
  • “Dragon’s Blood and Cardamom: The Foreign and the Distant in Early Modern Chinese Natural History.” History of Science Society Annual Meeting, Austin, November 2004.
  • “The Name of the Rose: Naming and the Classification of Nature in the Bencao gangmu.” History of Science Society Annual Meeting, Denver, November 2001.

Other presentations
  • Pitt History Department: Trajectories, 30 September 2022 (via Zoom)
  • Pitt History Department joint book launch: Carla Nappi’s Translating Early Modern China and Ruth Mostern’s The Yellow River, with Angela Zito commentary, 15 October 2021 (via Zoom).
  • Book duet: Carla Nappi’s Translating Early Modern China and David Marshall’s The Weimar Origins of Rhetorical Inquiry, Pitt Humanities Center, 16 September 2021.
  • Paper commentator for Steven Moon, “Musical Biotechnics and Sonic Materialism in Turkish Medical Practice,” Humanities Center, University of Pittsburgh, 18 February 2021.
  • Guest speaker on undergraduate research, Honors College, University of Pittsburgh, 15 February 2021.
  • Paper commentator for Ellen Larson, “Pause, Play, Repeat: Unpacking Zhang Peili’s Analog Temporalities and Unproductive Productivity in Early Chinese Video Art,” Humanities Center, University of Pittsburgh, 05 November 2020.
  • Speaker, Summer Institute for Chinese Studies, University of Pittsburgh, 03 June 2020.
  • Metagestures book launch, The New School for Social Research, 10 October 2019.
  • Commentator, “Genealogies and History,” Genealogies of Modernity workshop, University of Pittsburgh, 14-15 May 2019.
  • “Symposium Reimagined.” Medieval & Renaissance Studies Program, University of Pittsburgh, 15 November 2018.
  • Commentator, Humanities Center colloquium, University of Pittsburgh, 09 November 2018.
  • Guest seminar co-leader, seminar in genre theory (with Jennifer Waldron), University of Pittsburgh, 04 October 2018.
  • Public reading from Metagestures, Bluestockings Bookstore, New York City, 20 September 2018.
  • “Metagestures: A Reading.” New York City, 22-23 September 2017.
  • Invited speaker, UNauguration Day, Vancouver, British Columbia, 20 January 2017.
  • “Fictioning the History of Science.” Science and Technology Studies Program, University of British Columbia,  01 November 2016.
  • Participant in Order of the Third Bird Attention Lab, Mildred’s Lane art-site, Narrowsburg, NY, 18-24 July 2016.
  • Workshop on podcasting, History Department, University of British Columbia, 11 April 2016.
  • “1848.” China History Cluster, University of British Columbia, 03 February 2016.
  • Discussion co-leader, “Michel Serres and STS,” Science and Technology Studies Program, University of British Columbia, 14 January 2016.
  • “Manchu Science and Medicine: The Manchu Anatomy.” Presenter, “Translating Manchu” workshop, Harvard University, 15-17 May 2015.
  • “A Song Sung Drunkenly: Translating with Manchu Poets in the Early Nineteenth Century.” History Department Colloquium, Simon Fraser University, 22 January 2015.
  • Leader of book discussion, “Thinking with Thinking with Whitehead,” Science and Technology Studies Program, University of British Columbia, 08 January 2015.
  • “Street Scenes/Senses” (with Timothy Taylor). Belkin Art Gallery Conversations Series, University of British Columbia, 13 November 2014.
  • Commentator, workshop on “Dark Matters II: Science and the Cold War in a Decolonizing World,” University of British Columbia, 06 September 2014.
  • “Turns of Phrase: Strumming, Sparring, and Translating Medical Bodies.” Science and Technology Studies Program, University of British Columbia, 30 January 2014.
  • “Sample and Mix: The Body Sonic in Qing Science and Medicine.” Science and Technology Studies Program, University of British Columbia, 14 November 2013.
  • Commentator, “The Space That is More than Space: New Perspectives on Buddhist Sacred Sites in East Asia” workshop, University of British Columbia, 02 August 2013.
  • “Translating Qing Bodies.” “Bodies in Motion” workshop, University of British Columbia, 22-23 March 2013.
  • “When medical practices travel across cultural borders, how is the body translated?” Co-leader of a Peter Wall Scholars Café discussion, University of British Columbia, 12 March 2012.
  • “Healing and the Images of Guo Fengyi.” Public lecture in conjunction with exhibition, Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, 10 March 2012.
  • “Revolutionary Thinking.” “China’s Republican Revolution in History” workshop, Centre for Chinese Research, University of British Columbia, 15 February 2012.
  • “Illegible Cities: Translating Foreign Nature in Sixteenth Century China.” Science and Society Colloquium, University of British Columbia, November 2009.
  • Participant in “Observation in Early Modern Europe” faculty seminar (led by Lorraine Daston), Folger Institute, May 2008.
  • “Wriggling Across the Empire: Worms, Medicine, and the Qing Imperial Project.” University of Washington School of Medicine, Bozeman, MT, 25 April 2008.
  • “Poison: ‘Foreign’ Drugs in Early Modern China and the Recipe as Literary Form.” Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, February 2007.
  • Roundtable discussant, “Animals and Humans.” Unnatural and Natural Geographies Conference, Chico Hot Springs, Montana, January 2007.
  • “Observation as an Epistemological Device in Chinese Natural History.” East Asian Studies Colloquium, Princeton University, September 2004.
  • “We Don’t Need No Mass Extinctions: Patterns of Extinction across the Permo-Triassic Boundary.” Smithsonian Institution, 1997.