I am a historian of China and of the history of science‭, ‬and I am deeply interested in historical‭ ‬epistemology‭, ‬or the history of ways of knowing‭. ‬My recent book‭, ‬The Monkey and the Inkpot‭: ‬Natural History and its Transformations in Early Modern China (Harvard University Press, 2009), ‬is a study of belief-making in early modern‭ ‬Chinese natural history through the lens of the Bencao gangmu‭ (‬1596‭), ‬a compendium of materia medica‭. ‬

My work right now is focused on trying to understand what it has looked like throughout early modernity for people to decide that something was equivalent or identical to something else. While the broad topic lies somewhere within the history of translation, the questions more properly form the scaffolding of histories of identification, sameness, and equivalence: of words, of ideas, of sentences, of objects, of people.

I'm doing this in one book project by excavating the peoples and practices of official translation bureaus in Ming and Qing China, and I'm especially interested in dictionaries and glossaries as literary texts. In another book project I'm looking more specifically at the translation of the natural world (and images and descriptions thereof) in the Qing. What did it look like to decide, and to argue, that four names applied to the same flower, or lizard, or person? That project is a dialogic study using Chinese, Manchu, Tibetan, and Mongolian sources. In a final long-term project, I'm honing in on practices of resemblance and translation in the context of medieval and early modern Chinese-Arabic-Persian exchange.

Prospective Graduate Students

I especially encourage applications from motivated students working on the history of science or medicine in East Asia: with very strong History, Asian Studies, and STS departments that work harmoniously together, UBC offers an ideal environment for projects in this field. In addition, I regularly work with graduate students who focus on early modern (or late imperial, or Ming/Qing, etc etc) China, early modern science/technology/medicine, history of medicine and/or natural history, global circulation of knowledge, and historical ontology and epistemology. As a historian who is committed to deeply trans-disciplinary historical work, I'm particularly keen on working with graduate students who are similarly interested in doing work that is firmly grounded in rigorous historical methodology while speaking and learning across disciplines. If you fall into any of these categories, if you are willing to work very hard, and if you haven't yet lost your sense of goofy, excited curiosity about the world, feel free to be in touch as you consider a home for your graduate-study plans. 

I will be on leave during the 2012-2013 academic year as a Fellow of the National Humanities Center http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org

For links to ongoing book projects, see:

Illegible Cities: Translating Early Modern China

Recipes for Exchange: Drugs and Empire in Early Modernity

Rihla: Science and Medicine Across the Silk Routes

‬You can find a current cv and sample of course syllabi on my personal website here. 

New Books Network

I host the East Asian Studies channel and co-host the Science, Technology, and Society channel of the New Books Network.  Feel free to be in touch with suggestions for interviews.

Forum for the History of Science in Asia (FHSAsia)

You can find the FHSAsia, a special interest group of the History of Science Society, here: http://fhsasia.blogspot.com/

For up-to-date announcements via invitation to our Google Group, and for more information about the Forum, please email carla.nappi@ubc.ca.