China
A major center of East Asian studies in Middle America, the University of Illinois offers one of the most innovative graduate programs in Chinese history in the country.
The graduate program emphasizes the crossing of disciplinary boundaries, grounding historical analysis within a general understanding of theoretical and historiographical issues. With the support of a fine Asian Library containing over 200,000 books and journals, our program offers a broad range of courses and research topics, ranging from print culture in Ming China to the cultural politics of cinema in twentieth century China and Hong Kong. Our particular strength lies in the cultural and intellectual history of China from 1400 to 1950.
Core faculty in Chinese history
Kaiwing Chow specializes in the study of Chinese and cultural history. He is currently working on a book project exploring the impact of publishing on the production of literary culture, educational practice, and politics in late Ming China. He has started a new project on an interpretative biography of Confucius, which will be used as a thread in a study of the various philosophical schools against the rapid social, economic, and political changes in the three centuries before the unification by the Qin state. Professor Chow is the author of The Rise of Confucian Ritualism in Late Imperial China: Ethics, Classics, and Lineage Discourse (Stanford, 1994).
Poshek Fu is a cultural and social historian with interdisciplinary interests in film, literature, and cultural theory. He is currently completing a book manuscript on the politics of transgression and social organization of Chinese cinema during World War II. He has also begun two new projects: (1) the politics of representation of Chinese in American popular culture, and (2) a historical study of the Shaw Brothers' Studio. The studio played a critical role in structuring the popular mentality and identity of Chinese communities in Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, and Taiwan between the 1950s and 1970s through its creation of an imaginary space of ethnic Chineseness amidst the social turmoil in the region. Professor Fu is the author of Passivity, Resistance, and Collaboration: Intellectual Choices in Occupied Shanghai, 1937-1945 (Stanford, 1993).
Other faculty with research interests in Chinese history
Ann Burkus (Art)
Zongqu Cai (Literature)
C.C. Cheng (Emeriti; Linguistics)
Rania Huntington (East Asian Languages and Cultures)
Alexander Mayer (East Asian Languages and Cultures: Buddhism)
Jerry Packard (Linguistics)
George Yu (Politics)