Directory

Research Interests

• Modern Chinese history
• History of everyday life in twentieth-century China
• History of information management
• Comparative literacy studies
• War and society

Current Projects

• My second book project, tentatively titled The Diasporic State: Cross-Border Information Flows in Wartime China, 1937–1945, investigates information exchanges among family members, friends, and state functionaries across political borders during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945).
• I am also working on a digital project on the history of the Asian community at UA and in Tuscaloosa.

Courses Taught

• Asian Civilization to 1400 (HY 113)
• Asian Civilization From 1400 (HY 114)
• History of Contemporary China (HY 338)
• Chinese History Through Film (HY 400)
• Modern China Since 1600 (HY404)
• History of Literacy (HY 430)
• History Writing Seminar (HY 665)

Awards and Honors

• Research Fellowship, Hoover Institution Library & Archives at Stanford University (2022–2023)
• Fellowship, College of Arts and Sciences Community Engagement Academy, The University of Alabama (2021–2022)
• Recognition through the Extra Credit program for making a unique difference to UA students, The University of Alabama (2021)
• Professional Development Grant, Division of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, The University of Alabama ( 2021)
• CARSCA, College of Arts and Sciences, The University of Alabama (2019)
• East Asia Library Travel Grants, Stanford University (2017)

Monographs

• Beyond Citizenship: Literacy and Personhood in Everyday China, 1900–1945 (Leiden: Brill, 2022).

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

• “Learning the New Culture: Rural Literacy Education in Shanxi in the 1930s and 1940s,” in Routledge Handbook of Revolutionary China, ed. Alan Baumler. Routledge, 2019.
• “Villagers into Comrades: Literacy Education in the Jiangxi Soviet,” Twentieth-Century China 41 (January 2016):81-101.

Presentations

• “From Peasants to Working People: A New Reading of Revolutionary Experiences in Rural China, 1944–1945,” Association for Asian Studies (AAS) 2021 Annual Conference, virtual conference, March 21–26, 2021.
• “Waging Revolution through Taxation: The Chinese Communists in North China, 1937–1945,” 59th Annual Meeting of the Southeast Conference of the Association for Asian Studies (SEC-AAS), New College of Florida, Sarasota, FL, January 17–19, 2020.
• “To Get Rich Is Glorious: Numeracy, Taxation, and the Chinese Communists’ Early State-Building in Northwest Shanxi during the Second Sino-Japanese War,” Social Science History Association (SSHA) 2019 Annual Conference, Chicago, IL, November 21–24, 2019.
• “Liberation through Learning? Rural Women’s Navigation of the Literate and Illiterate World in Revolutionary North China,” Association for Asian Studies (AAS) 2018 Annual Conference, Washington, DC, March 22–25, 2018.
• “Mediated the Local and the Translocal: Literacy and Identity Formation in 1930s and 1940s Wartime China,” 46th Annual Mid-Atlantic Region Association for Asian Studies Conference (MARAAS), Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, October 6–8, 2017.
• “Contested Literacy Beliefs and Practices in Early 20th Century China,” 56th Annual Meeting of the Southeast Conference of the Association for Asian Studies (SEC-AAS), University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS, January 13–15, 2017.
• “The Gaze of Modernity: Rural Literacy in the Early PRC,” Association for Asian Studies (AAS) 2016 Annual Conference, Seattle, WA, March 31–April 3, 2016.