The newest little story from The Elizabeths – a fiction experiment in conjectural early modern history – is now up on the site. This is the second story by Elizabeth Woodfall, historian of wind. You can read it by heading over to “The History of Wings.” For more on the project, check this out. Continue reading The History of Wings: A Little Story
Meet Elizabeth Woodfall, historian of wind. You may have read her first story (“The History of Feathers”), and now you can learn a little bit about her and her particular approach to local history by heading over to the the first part of her life history, 1. Stories in Dust and Song. For more on the Elizabeths project in conjectural early modern historiography, check this out. Continue reading Elizabeth Woodfall (Historian of Wind), Pt. 1: Stories in Dust and Song
The newest little story from The Elizabeths, a fiction experiment in conjectural early modern history, is now up on the site. This is the first story by a new Elizabeth: Elizabeth Woodfall, historian of wind. Read her first story by clicking over to “The History of Feathers.” For more on the project, check this out. Continue reading The History of Feathers: A Little Story
In late imperial China, how did local elites connect with and influence the central government? How was local information made and managed? How did the state incorporate frontier areas into the empire? How were books produced and read, and by whom? In his new book, Joseph R. Dennis helps answer these questions and more by studying the genre of local gazetteers. Focusing on the Ming period, Writing, Publishing, … Continue reading Writing, Publishing, and Reading Local Gazetteers: An Interview
Kelly J. Whitmer’s new book offers a history of science set in the Halle Orphanage, a building that was founded in the middle of the 1690s in the Prussian city of Halle by a group of German Lutherans known as Pietists. Whitmer understands this orphanage as a scientific community, thereby countering a tendency to approach the history of science in a way that treats science and … Continue reading The Halle Orphanage as Scientific Community: An Interview
The pages of Matthew C. Hunter’s wonderful new book are full of paper fish, comets, sleepy-eyed gazes, drunk ants, and a cast full of fascinating (and sometimes hilarious) members of the experimental community of Restoration London. Wicked Intelligence: Visual Art and the Science of Experiment in Restoration London (University of Chicago Press, 2013) maps the visual traces of drawing, collecting, and building practices between 1650 and 1720 to … Continue reading Wicked Intelligence: An Interview
Michael Gibbs Hill’s new translation renders into English, for the first time, the introduction and overview to Wang Hui’s 4-volume Rise of Modern Chinese Thought (Xiandai Zhongguo sixiangde xingqi, 2004). China from Empire to Nation-State (Harvard University Press, 2014) thus makes available to an English-reading audience a fascinating perspective on the history and historiography of modern China in the context of a larger global frame. Hill’s translation offers a view … Continue reading China from Empire to Nation-State: An Interview
Wai-yee Li’s recent book explores writing around the Ming-Qing transition in seventeenth-century China, paying careful attention to the relationships of history and literature in writing by women, about women, and/or in a feminine voice. In a series of chapters that showcase exceptionally thoughtful, virtuosic readings of a wide range of texts, Women and National Trauma in Late Imperial Chinese Literature (Harvard University Asia Center, 2014) considers how conceptions … Continue reading Women and National Trauma in Late Imperial Chinese Literature: An Interview
In pre-modern Japan, Ise monogatari (also known as the Ise Stories or Tales of Ise) was considered to be one of the three most important works of literature in the Japanese language. Joshua S. Mostow’s new book focuses on the reception and appropriation of these stories from the twelfth through seventeenth centuries. Paying special attention to the relationship of image and text in these works, Courtly Visions: The Ise Stories and the Politics of Cultural … Continue reading Courtly Visions: An Interview
Eugene N. Anderson’s new book offers an expansive history of food, environment, and their relationships in China. From prehistory through the Ming and beyond, Food and Environment in Early and Medieval China (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) pays careful attention to a wide range of contexts of concern with nature and its resources. Readers of Anderson’s book will find fascinating discussions of rice agriculture and fermentation, the … Continue reading Food and Environment in Early and Medieval China: An Interview
Carla Nappi 