Department of History and Geography
Texas Southern University
3100 Cleburne Street
Houston, TX 77004

PROFESSIONAL HISTORY

Texas Southern University
Professor (2018– ), Associate Professor (2012–2018), and Interim Chair (2015–2016), Department of History and Geography; Director, Texas Southern University China Institute (2012– ).

Seoul National University
Visiting Professor, Templeton “Science and Religion in East Asia” Project, Science Culture Research Center, College of Natural Sciences (2011–2012).

University of Texas at Austin
Assistant Professor, Departments of History and Asian Studies (2001–2011).

University of Chicago
Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of History, Fishbein Center for the History of Science, and in the Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science (2000–2001).

Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow and Member of the School of Historical Studies (1999–2000).

Stanford University
Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Program in History and Philosophy of Science, and Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of History (1997–1999).

University of California, Berkeley
Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Chinese Studies (Spring 1997).

Harvard University
Postdoctoral Fellow, Fairbank Center for East Asian Research (Fall 1996).

EDUCATION

University of California, Los Angeles
Ph.D., Chinese History and History of Science, Department of History.

Harvard University
Visiting Fellow, Department of the History of Science.

Peking University, Beijing, China
Visiting Scholar, Department of History.

University of California, Los Angeles
M.A., Chinese Literature, Dept. of East Asian Languages and Cultures.

Peking University
Chinese Literature, Dept. of Chinese Language and Literature.

Stanford University
M.S., Mathematics.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
B.S., Mathematics.

PUBLICATIONS

Authored Books

1. The Chinese Roots of Linear Algebra. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. xiii + 286 pp.


2. Imagined Civilizations: China, the West, and Their First Encounter. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013. x + 374 pp.


3. Quantum States: Science and U.S.-China Relations in the Global Twenty-First Century. In progress.


4. The Spectre of Civilizations. In progress.



Refereed Articles

5. “Tracing Practices Purloined by the ‘Three Pillars,’” Korean Journal for the History of Science 34, no. 2 (forthcoming in 2012), 64 pp.


6. “Universals of Yesteryear: Hegel’s Modernity in an Age of Globalization,” in Global History, edited by A. G. Hopkins (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006), 66–97.


7. “The Great Explanandum,” essay review of The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society, 1250–1600, by Alfred W. Crosby, American Historical Review 105, no. 2 (April 2000): 486–493.


8. “Translating Worlds: Incommensurability and Problems of Existence in Seventeenth-Century China,” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 7, no. 1 (spring 1999): 95–128. Revised version published as “Translating the Untranslatable: From Copula to Incommensurable Worlds,” in Tokens of Exchange: The Problem of Translation in Global Circulations, edited by Lydia H. Liu (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000, reprinted in 2011), 45–73. Reprinted in Han yi Ying lilun duben 汉译英理论读本 [Theoretical Reader on Translating Chinese into English], ed. Yu Shiyi 余石屹 (Beijing: Science Publications [Kexue chubanshe 科学出版社], 2008).


9. “On the Problem of Chinese Science,” in The Science Studies Reader, edited by Mario Biagioli (New York: Routledge, 1999), 189–201. Revised version published as “Beyond Science and Civilization: A Post-Needham Critique,” East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine 16 (1999): 88–114. Translated into Chinese by Wan Yiji 万一己 as “Chaoyue kexue yu wenming: yige hou Li Yuese de piping” 超越科学与文明:一个后李约瑟的批评, in Zhongguo kexue yu kexue geming 中国科学与科学革命 [Chinese Science and the Scientific Revolution], ed. Liu Dun 刘钝 and Wang Yangzong 王扬宗 (Shenyang: Liaoning jiaoyu chubanshe 辽宁教育出版社, 2002), 599–624.


10. “The Flight from Reason: Higher Superstition and the Refutation of Science Studies,” in Science Wars, edited by Andrew Ross (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), 259–92.



Articles Written in Chinese and Published in China

11. “Ji he yuan ben, shenwei dapao, he ‘yanima’: cong kexue zhishi de shehuixue de jiaodu tantao shiqi shiji Xixue zhi yinru Zhongguo” 《幾何原本》,神威大砲,和『亞尼瑪』:從科 學知識的社會學的角度探討十七世紀西學之引入中國 [Euclid, Cannons and Anima: An Analysis of the Introduction of Western Learning into Seventeenth-Century China from the Perspective of the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge], in Ke shi xin chuan 科史薪傳, edited by Liu Dun 劉鈍, Han Qi 韓琦, et al. (Shenyang: Liaoning jiaoyu chubanshe, 1997), 84–96.


12. “Dui xiandaixing de shuangchong fouding queren: Habeimasi de chaoyan shili lilun de zixiang maodun” 對現代性的雙重否定確認:哈貝馬斯的超驗勢力理論的自相矛盾(上、下) [Modernity by Contradiction: Habermas’ Paradoxical Theory of Transcendental Power, Parts 1 and 2], Xueren 學人 [The scholars] 6 (1994): 425–43 and 8 (1995): 385–402.



Articles in Preparation

13. “The Diffusion of Linear Algebra from China to Medieval Europe” (14 typeset pages, submitted for review).


14. “Reconstructing Mathematical Practices from Fibonacci’s Liber Abaci: ‘On the Buying of Horses’” (15 typeset pages).


15. “The Demise of Traditional Linear Algebra in China: Mei Wending’s Criticisms of Fangcheng Practices” (52 typeset pages).


16. “How Structuralism Became a Science: Lessons from Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics” (20 pages, double-spaced MS).


17. “What Was an Episteme? A Genealogical Critique of Foucault’s Archaeology” (24 pages, double-spaced MS).


18. “Modernity by Contradiction: Habermas’s Paradoxical ‘Communicative Reason’ in Action” (24 pages, double-spaced MS). Revised version of publications 9a and 9b, “Dui xiandaixing de shuangchong fouding queren,” parts 1 and 2, in English.


19. “Scientific Revolutions East and West,” in The Cambridge World History, vol. 6, The Construction of a Global World, 1400–1800 CE, ed. Jerry H. Bentley and Sanjay Subrahmanyam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Under contract.)

FELLOWSHIPS AND GRANTS

Templeton Religion Trust “Science and Religion in East Asia” Project Visiting Fellow, Science Culture Research Center, Seoul National University, Sept. 2011–Aug. 2012.

American Council of Learned Societies, ACLS/SSRC/NEH International and Area Studies Fellow, Sept. 2004–Aug. 2005.

University of Texas Faculty Research Assignment, Sept. 2004–Aug. 2005.

University of Texas Humanities Institute Fellow, Fall 2003.

University of Texas Summer Research Assignment, Summer 2003.

National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, Sept. 1999–Aug. 2000.

Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship, Stanford University, Sept. 1997–Aug. 1999.

Postdoctoral Fellowship, Center for Chinese Studies, University of California, Berkeley, Spring 1997.

Postdoctoral Fellowship, Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, Harvard University, Fall 1996.

CONFERENCES, WORKSHOPS AND PANELS

Panel organizer, “Performance, Practice, and Contest in Early Chinese Texts,” Southwest Conference on Asian Studies, University of Texas at Austin, October 16–17, 2009.

Conference co-organizer, “Disunity of Chinese Science,” Franke Institute for the Humanities, University of Chicago, May 10–12, 2002.

Conference co-organizer, “Rethinking Science and Civilization: The Ideologies, Disciplines, and Rhetorics of World History,” Stanford University, May 21–23, 1999. Sponsored by the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences.

Co-organizer, “Critical Studies: Writing Science,” faculty/graduate student workshop and lecture series, Stanford Humanities Center, 1998–99.

Conference organizer, “Intersecting Areas and Disciplines: Cultural Studies of Chinese Science, Technology and Medicine,” Center for Chinese Studies, UC Berkeley, February 27–28, 1998.

Conference co-organizer, “Materializing Cultures: Science, Technology, and Medicine in Global Contexts,” Stanford Humanities Center, May 1–3, 1998.

Co-organizer, “Empires and Cultures,” faculty/graduate student seminar, Stanford Humanities Center, 1997–98.

Panel organizer, “New Directions in the Cultural Studies of Chinese Science and Medicine,” Annual Meeting of the History of Science Society, Nov. 8, 1997.

Panel organizer, “Re-Siting the Missionaries in China: Critical Analyses of Translation, Imperialism, and Historical Memory,” Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, March 25–28, 1998.

LECTURES

“Tracing Practices: The Diffusion of Linear Algebra Across Medieval Eurasia,” to be presented at the 24th International Congress of History of Science, Technology And Medicine, Manchester, England, July 21–28, 2013.

Keynote address, “Historicizing Incommensurability,” presented at “Incommensurability 50: Conference on the 50th Anniversary of the Presentation of Incommensurability by Kuhn and Feyerabend,” June 1–3, 2012, National Taiwan University.

“Tracing Practices: An Alternative Approach to World History of Science,” presented at “Science and Christianity in the Encounter of Confucian East Asia with West: 1600–1800,” Templeton “Science and Religion in East Asia” Project, Science Culture Research Center, Seoul National University, December 15–17, 2011.

“Imagining Civilizations: China, the West, and Their First Encounter,” presented at “ReWired: Asian/TechnoScience/Area Studies,” University of California Humanities Research Institute Seminar in Experimental Critical Theory, convened at the Center for Chinese Studies, University of Hawai’i, Manoa, August 1–10, 2011.

“The Chinese Roots of Linear Algebra,” presented at the following forums:

East Asian Studies Program, Princeton University, March 24, 2011.

East Asian Studies, Rutgers University, March 23, 2011.

Joint Meeting of the American Mathematical Society and Mathematical Association of America, New Orleans, January 6–9, 2011.

Annual Meeting of the History of Science Society, Montréal, Quebec, November 4–7, 2010.

“Fangcheng in Translation: Practice, Patronage, and Plagiarism,” presented at “China in Europe, Europe in China,” University of Zürich, June 14–15, 2010.

“Mapping Spaces in Early China,” Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, January 2010.

“Translating Texts and Circulating Practices,” presented at “Go-betweens, Translations, and the Circulation of Knowledge,” Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, University College London, November 13–14, 2009.

“Patronage and Practice in the Nine Chapters of Mathematical Arts,” presented at the Southwest Conference on Asian Studies, October 16–17, 2009.

“Reconstructing Early Development of Determinants in China: Evidence from the Nine Chapters of Mathematical Arts and Later Commentaries.” Versions presented at the following forums:

History of Science Colloquium, Department of History, University of Texas at Austin, May 1, 2009.

Department of Physics Colloquium, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, Texas, October 6, 2009.

Joint Meeting of the American Mathematical Society and Mathematical Association of America, San Antonio, Texas, January 14, 2006.

“Forging Antiquities: ‘China’ and the ‘West’ in Seventeenth-Century China,” “The Age of Antiquaries in Europe and China,” Bard Graduate Center, New York, March 25–27, 2004.

“The Postmoderns’ Modernity,” “Modernity: Contexts and Contests, Forms and Future,” University of Texas Humanities Institute, December 4, 2003.

“Ancient Roots of Modern Science,” with Dick Teresi and Jamil Ragep, NPR’s “Science Friday,” December 20, 2002, 2–3 p.m.

“Disunity of Language, Science, and Culture,” Science in Human Culture Seminar, Northwestern University, November 22, 2002.

“Quantifying Ritual: Political Cosmology, Courtly Music, and Precision Mathematics in Seventeenth-Century China.” Versions presented at the following forums:

Disunity of Chinese Science, University of Chicago, May 10–12, 2002.

Program in History and Philosophy of Science, University of Texas at Austin, April 11, 2002.

Seminars on Late Imperial Chinese Culture and Science, School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, December 3, 1999;

Annual Meeting of the History of Science Society, Oct. 23, 1998;

“Intersecting Areas and Disciplines: Cultural Studies of Chinese Science, Technology and Medicine,” UC Berkeley, February 27–28, 1998.

“'Western Learning’ in Seventeenth-Century China: A Microhistorical Approach to World History,” presented at the following forums:

Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, January 2002.

“Symposium on Chinese Science and Medicine,” Franke Institute for the Humanities, University of Chicago, May 8, 2001.

“Xu Guangqi, Memorialist.” presented at the following forums:

History of Science Colloquium, UCLA, April 15, 2002.

“Matteo Ricci and After: Four Centuries of Cultural Interactions between China and the West,” City University of Hong Kong, October 12–15, 2001.

“Demystifying Translation: The Multiplicities of Language-Games,” presented at "Appropriations: Between Languages, Among Nations,” Stanford University, May 11–14, 2000.

“The Jesuits as Missionaries of Science: Euclid’s Elements in Seventeenth-Century China.” Versions presented at the following forums:

“Colloquium: Culture and Science in Late Traditional China,” Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, March 17–18, 2000;

Early Science Group, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University, Oct. 2, 1995.

“Jesuits, Textualism, and Science in China and Europe in the 17th and 18th Centuries: A Roundtable Discussion” (with Anthony Grafton, R. Po-chia Hsia, Willard Peterson, and Benjamin Elman), Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, Jan. 24, 2000.

“The Problem of 'Culture' in Cultural Studies of Science.” Versions presented at the following forums:

“Rethinking Science and Civilization: The Ideologies, Disciplines, and Rhetorics of World History,” Stanford University, May 21–23, 1999.

“Critical Studies Workshop: Writing Science,” Stanford University, April 7, 1999.

“Wrighting the Great Divide: ‘Science’ as an Emblem of ‘The West’” presented at “Reconstructing Science and the Humanities,” UCLA, April 25–26, 1998.

“How to Do Things with Worlds: Incommensurability, Translation, and Problems of Existence in Seventeenth-Century China.” Versions presented at the following forums:

“History of Mathematics: Mathematics in the Americas and the Far East, 1800–1940,” Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut, Oberwolfach, Germany, Oct. 18–22, 1998;

“Materializing Cultures: Science, Technology, and Medicine in Global Contexts,” Stanford Humanities Center, May 1–3, 1998;

Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, March 27, 1998;

“Maritime China: Culture, Commerce, and Society,” Annual Symposium, Center for Chinese Studies, UC Berkeley, March 13–14, 1998.

Research Workshop in Chinese Humanistic and Historical Studies, Center for Chinese Studies, UC Berkeley, Sept. 19, 1997.

“Local Knowledges, Local Contexts: Mathematics in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties,” presented at “The Song-Yuan-Ming Transition: A Turning Point in Chinese History?” at the UCLA Conference Center, Lake Arrowhead, CA, June 5–11, 1997. Sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies.

“On the Problem of Chinese Science: A Post-Needham Critique.” Versions presented at the following forums:

Chinese Historiography Studies Group, meeting-in-conjunction with the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, March 25–28, 1998;

Annual Meeting of the Society for the Social Studies of Science, October 23, 1997;

Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, Harvard University, Nov. 15, 1996.

“Proof, Propaganda, and Patronage: A Cultural History of the Dissemination of Western Studies in Seventeenth-Century China.” Versions presented at the following forums:

Annual Meeting of the History of Science Society, Nov. 8, 1997;

“The Jesuits: Culture, Learning, and the Arts, 1540–1773,” Boston College, May 28 to June 1, 1997;

Workshop on Chinese Science, Center for Chinese Studies, UCLA, May 24, 1997;

New Work in East Asian Humanities, Stanford University, April 24, 1997;

Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, March 14, 1997;

Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies, Wesleyan University, Nov. 7, 1996;

Chinese Cultural Studies Workshop, Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, Harvard University, Oct. 31, 1996;

Colloquia in Science, Technology, and Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Oct. 7, 1996.

“Mathematics as the ‘Lesser Application’ of Proof,” UC Berkeley Graduate Student Conference, April 29, 1995.

"Ji he yuan ben, shenwei dapao, he yanima” [Euclid, Cannons and Anima], presented in Chinese at the Institute for the History of the Natural Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, August 4, 1994.

“Foucault: Archaeology, Genealogy, and the Constitution of the Subject,” Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, February 22, 1994.

“The Gift of Mathematics: Western Reason in Chinese Science,” presented at the West Coast History of Science Society Conference in Morro Bay, May 1992.

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

“East Asia to 1800”
Offered every year. Survey course for undergraduates. Presents a cultural history of East Asia covering major social, political, economic, military, philosophical, literary, and cultural developments in China, Japan, and Korea. Readings from primary sources.

“Traditional China”
Offered every year. Survey for undergraduates. A cultural history of traditional China through readings in primary sources, including Shang oracle bone inscriptions, early Chinese philosophy (Daoism, Confucianism, Legalism, Militarism, and Buddhism), dynastic histories, historical biographies, poetry, songs, novels, ritual manuals, diaries, scientific treatises, philological studies, and political debates.

“History of World Science to 1650”
Offered once every three semesters. A cultural history of world science and medicine from ancient times to the seventeenth century through readings in primary sources (in translation). Readings include selections from texts on astronomy, biology, chemistry and alchemy, cosmology, mathematics, medicine, and physics, from ancient times to the Scientific Revolution, from China, Greece, Islam, and early modern Europe, by Aristotle, Galen, Euclid, Ptolemy, Liu Hui, Al-Tusi, Avicenna, Paracelsus, Galileo, and Xu Guangqi.

“History of Chinese Science, Technology and Medicine”
Fall 2006. Examines Chinese science, technology, and medicine in its cultural context through readings in primary sources (in translation); topics include astronomy, cosmography, mathematics, alchemy, elite and popular medicine, material culture, and technologies of everyday life.

“History of Chinese Medicine”
Spring 2006. Examines Chinese medicine through readings in primary sources (in translation), from Shang dynasty oracle bones and the earliest Mawangdui medical manuscripts to modern reformulations of “traditional” Chinese medicine.

“Cultural History of Late Imperial China”
UT Austin, spring 2002. A cultural history of China during the Late Imperial period, focusing on the Song through Qing dyansties, covering the major historical developments in economy, society, Confucian learning, religion, science and technology, civil examinations, intellectual trends, law, and foreign relations.

“Cultural History of Ming China”
UT Austin, spring 2002. A cultural history of China during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), covering the major historical developments in economy, society, Confucian learning, religion, science and technology, civil examinations, intellectual trends, law, and foreign relations.

“Critical Studies: The Disunity of Language, Science, and Culture”
UT Austin, spring 2002; Univ. of Chicago, winter 2001; Stanford, fall 1998. Seminar for graduate and upper-level undergraduate students. Critical approach to major theoretical issues at the intersection of language, science, and culture. Topics include structuralism, post-structuralism, sociology of scientific knowledge, cultural studies of science, post-modernism, and post-colonialism.

“Imagined Unities: Nations, Civilizations, Modernities”
UT Austin, spring 2003; Univ. of Chicago, spring 2001. Seminar for graduate and upper-level undergraduate students. This interdisciplinary course examines the most important works on representations of cultures - whether conceptualized as tribes, nations, civilizations, or the modern. Readings include Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Levy-Bruhl, Levi-Strauss, Whorf, Wittgenstein, Quine, Habermas, Foucault, Clifford, and Spivak.

“Introduction to Sources in the History of East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine”
Univ. of Chicago, winter 2001. Undergraduate seminar. This course explores East Asian science, technology, and medicine by reading primary texts (in translation), including selections from the most important existing historical documents on divination, astronomy, optics, mathematics, alchemy, medicine, and technology.

“The Scientific Revolution: History and Counter-History”
Univ. of Chicago, spring 2001; Stanford, spring 1998. Examines recent research to re-assess the claims made for the "scientific revolution,” followed by an overview of work on early modern science that has further broadened our understanding of the period, ranging from studies of museums and gentlemanly trust to the sciences of non-European cultures.

“Chinese Medicine: Interdisciplinary Studies”
History Department, Stanford University, spring 1999. Interdisciplinary approach (drawing on cultural history, anthropology, gender studies, and philosophy) to the study of Chinese medicine in its intellectual, social, and cultural context.

“Cultural Sensibilities and Practices in Ming China”
History Dept., Stanford, winter 1999, with Timothy Brook and Richard Vinograd. Cultural history of the Ming dynasty, covering economics, philosophy, art, science, religion, gender, and material and popular culture.

“Understanding Being Chinese: The Whys and Hows of the Way”
Introduction to the Humanities, Stanford University, winter and spring 1999, with Timothy Brook and Haun Saussy. Undergraduate survey course covering political, social, economic and intellectual history of China from the Shang dynasty to the present.

“Cultural History of Chinese Science, Technology and Medicine”
History Dept., Stanford, winter 1998. Examines Chinese science, technology, and medicine in its cultural context; topics include astronomy, cosmography, mathematics, alchemy, elite and popular medicine, material culture, and technologies of everyday life.

Teaching Fellow, History of Science, Harvard University
Department of the History of Science, Harvard University. Led discussion sections for "The History of the Scientific Revolution” taught by Prof. Mario Biagioli. Course examines the transformation of scientific culture in the 16th and 17th centuries in the context of the court, patronage, and academies.

Teaching Assistant, Chinese Language, UCLA
Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, UCLA. Taught discussion sections for the first-year Chinese series, conducted in Chinese.

Mathematics Instructor, Zhongshan University
Department of Mathematics, Zhongshan University, Guangzhou, P.R.C. Taught the Real Analysis-Functional Analysis series to junior and senior mathematics majors for one year using Royden's Real Analysis, Rudin's Functional Analysis, and Shibian hanshu yu fanhan fenxi jichu [Foundations of Real Functions and Functional Analysis] by Cheng Qixiang et al. Full responsibility for course.

English Instructor, Volunteers in Asia, Stanford University--China and Taiwan Programs
North China University of Technology, Beijing, P.R.C. Taught freshman and sophomore classes scientific English for two years, full teaching responsibilities. Received "Excellent Teacher” award. Taught English for one year at the Tainan YMCA, Tainan, Taiwan, R.O.C.

Teaching Assistant, Mathematics, Stanford University
Department of Mathematics, Stanford University. Taught introductory calculus, full teaching responsibilities; served as Teaching Assistant for calculus and linear algebra courses; and tutored individual students.

SERVICE

History Department: China Search Committee (2005–2006); Salary Committee (2004); Graduate Program Committee (2003–2004); Budget Council (2003–2004); East Asian Search Committee (2003–2004); Segre Prize Committee (2003). Department of Asian Studies: East Asian Faculty Committee (2001–); Executive Committee (2006–2007); Chair of China Endowment (2005–2007); Library Liaison for East Asian Studies (2005–2007).

LANGUAGES

Classical Chinese – excellent. Modern Chinese – excellent. Japanese – reading ability, good. French – reading ability, good.

EXPERIENCE IN CHINA

Taught in China for four years and studied for one additional year: enrolled in or audited twenty regular undergraduate courses in modern and classical literature, philosophy, and history at Chinese universities; completed readings in Chinese for these courses totaling hundreds of books; lived with Chinese teachers in Chinese dormitories.

Conducted archival research as a visiting scholar at Peking University.

COMPUTER PROGRAMMING

Scientific typesetting—LaTeX. Scientific computation—Mathematica. Bibliographic and relational databases—Koha, Filemaker, MySQL, 4D. Chinese—Cangjie input. Programming—Perl. UNIX and server administration. HTML and web design.