Department of History

My interests include displacement and emplacement; the social and political roles of the living and the dead amid mass violence; and the critical analysis of the state over the long term. I am writing Living and Dying in the Long War, on the making and unmaking of community among people displaced by conflict across China and Taiwan from the 1930s through the 1950s. My first book, Superstitious Regimes: Religion and the Politics of Chinese Modernity, looked at the modern categorization of religious practice and its social and political ramifications. I have also written on Chinese political and print cultures and wartime and postwar society; and collaborated with scholars of various disciplines to investigate the role of the dead in modern China. I am co-PI with Maura Dykstra of Caltech on Magpie, a project for the standardized organization and sharing of sources across the digital divide in Chinese studies and beyond.