Craft, Technology, and Material Culture in Early Modern Asia
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Participants at Consortium activities will treat each other with respect and consideration to create a collegial, inclusive, and professional environment that is free from any form of discrimination, harassment, or retaliation.
Participants will avoid any inappropriate actions or statements based on individual characteristics such as age, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, nationality, political affiliation, ability status, educational background, or any other characteristic protected by law. Disruptive or harassing behavior of any kind will not be tolerated. Harassment includes but is not limited to inappropriate or intimidating behavior and language, unwelcome jokes or comments, unwanted touching or attention, offensive images, photography without permission, and stalking.
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Upcoming Meetings
There are no currently scheduled upcoming events.
Past Meetings
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September 1, 2023
Ruth Rogaski, Knowing Manchuria, Environments, the Senses, and Natural Knowledge on an Asian Borderland (University of Chicago Press, 2022), introduction & chapter 3.
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May 5, 2023
Susan Naquin, “The Bronze Ladies of Mt. Tai, 1600-1900,” in Gods of Mount Tai (Boston: Brill, 2022), 335-372.
Dorothy Ko, “'Fire, Walk with Me': Tales of Artisanal Body (Parts) and Innovation in Early Modern China,” in Crafting Enlightenment: Artisanal histories and transnational networks, (Liverpool University Press and University of Oxford, 2021), 273-296.
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April 7, 2023
Rachel Silberstein, A Fashionable Century: Textile Artistry and Commerce in Late Qing (Seattle: Washington University Press, 2020), Introduction and chapter 3.
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March 3, 2023
Susan Naquin, "Popularization through Pictures," in Gods of Mt. Tai (Boston: Brill, 2022), 373-414.
Kaijun Chen, "Imperial Models: Technology and Design in State Controlled Porcelain Manufacture in Early Modern China," History and Technology 38, issue 2-3 (October 2022): 1-17.
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February 3, 2023
Valérie Nègre, “Craft Knowledge in the Age of Encyclopedism”, in Lauren R. Cannady and Jennifer Ferng (dir.), Crafting Enlightenment. Artisanal Histories and Transnational Networks, Liverpool University Press and University of Oxford, 2021, p. 303-333.
Valérie Nègre, “Production and circulation of Technical Knowledge on Building Sites at the End of the Eighteenth Century”, Journal of the History of Science and Technology, numéro special ‘Building Sites for Making Knowledge’, vol. 15, n° 2, December 2021, p. 17-33.
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December 2, 2022
Houghteling, Sylvia. The Art of Cloth in Mughal India, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022, ch. 2.
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November 4, 2022
Davis Baird, Thing Knowledge: A Philosophy of Scientific Instruments (Berkeley: UC Press, 2004), chs. 2~3.
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October 7, 2022
Francesca Bray, "Translating the Art of Tea: Naturalizing Chinese Savoir Faire in British Assam," in Pamela Smith ed., Entangled Itineraries: Materials, Practices, and Knowledges across Eurasia (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019), 99-137.
Kyoungjin Bae, "Export Furniture and Artisanal Translation in Eighteenth-Century Canton," Isis 113.2 (June 2022): 310-330.
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September 9, 2022
For this week, we will read and discuss:
Jakobina Arch, Bringing Whales Ashore: Oceans and the Environment of Early Modern Japan (Washington University Press, 2018), introduction (3-22) and chapter 3 (79-109).
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May 13, 2022
For this week, we are going to read:
Kang, Hyeok Hweon. 2022. “Cooking Niter, Prototyping Nature: Saltpeter and Artisanal Experiment in Korea, 1592—1635.” Isis, January 1.
And we will workshop Susan Eberhard's dissertation chapter on silverware industry in Canton from the late 18th to early 19th centuries. Please email Susan Eberhard (seberhard@berkeley.edu) for the manuscript.
Group Conveners
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Kyoungjin Bae
Kyoungjin Bae is James P. Storer assistant professor of Asian history at Kenyon College. She is an historian of everyday technology and material culture in early modern China. She received a Ph.D. in Global and International History from Columbia University and completed two postdoctoral fellowships at the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan and the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Hong Kong. Her book manuscript examines Cantonese cabinet making and carpenters’ knowledge during the eighteenth century.
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Rachel Silberstein
Dr Rachel Silberstein is an independent scholar affiliated with the University of Washington specializing in Chinese dress and textile history. She earned a DPhil in Oriental Studies from the University of Oxford in 2015. Her monograph, A Fashionable Century: Textile Artistry and Commerce in the Late Qing (University of Washington Press, 2020) – a study of fashion and textile handicrafts in early modern China – won the Costume Society of America’s Millia Davenport Publication Award 2021 and an honorable mention from the 2023 Bei Shan Tang Monograph Prize. Rachel has published widely on Qing fashion in the journals West 86th, Fashion Theory, Costume, and Late Imperial China. Other publications include “Fashion in Ming and Qing China,” in The Cambridge Global History of Fashion (University of Cambridge Press, 2023), and “Threads of Commerce and Consumption: the Qing Trade in Cotton, Silk, and Wool Textiles,” in The Oxford Handbook of the China Trade (Oxford University Press, 2025, forthcoming). Previously Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Puget Sound and Rhode Island School of Design, her research has been supported by the Pasold Research Fund, the Luce Foundation/ACLS, and the Institute of Advanced Studies.
www.rachelsilbersteindphil.com
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Yijun Wang
Yijun Wang is Assistant Professor of History at New York University as well as a 2020-2021 ACLS-Luce China Early Career fellow. She is a historian of material culture, history of technology and gender in early modern China. Yijun is interested in the connections between knowledge, technology, power, and capitalism. Her book manuscript examines the transmissions of tin mining technology and changes in statecraft in China from 1700 to the 1850s.
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Yulian Wu
Yulian Wu is Assistant Professor of the History Department at Michigan State University. She specializes in material culture, gender relations, and Manchu studies in early modern China. She published her first book, Luxurious Networks: Salt Merchants, Status, and Statecraft in Eighteenth-Century China in 2017 (Stanford University Press). Her current project titled “Crafting Jade: The Construction of Objects and Empire in Eighteenth-Century China,” explores jade production and consumption in the High Qing period.
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