Craft, Technology, and Material Culture in Early Modern Asia

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Upcoming Meetings

There are no currently scheduled upcoming events.


Past Meetings

  • December 2, 2022

    Houghteling, Sylvia. The Art of Cloth in Mughal India, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022, ch. 2.


  • November 4, 2022

    Davis Baird, Thing Knowledge: A Philosophy of Scientific Instruments (Berkeley: UC Press, 2004), chs. 2~3.


  • 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.


  • 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).


  • 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.
     


  • April 8, 2022

    For this meeting, we are going to read:
    Li, Yuhang. Becoming Guanyin: Artistic Devotion of Buddhist Women in Late Imperial China. New York: Columbia University Press, 2020. Chapter 3.
    And we will workshop Yijun Wang's work-in-progress, "From Exotic Seafood to Superfood: Consumption and Knowledge Production of Edible Bird's Nest in the Context of Cross-Cultural Trade, 1600-1900." Please email Yijun Wang at yw741@nyu.edu to request the paper. Please request the paper by April 7 (Thursday), 12:00 pm.


  • March 11, 2022

    Russell, Andrew L., and Vinsel, Lee. “After Innovation, A Turn to Maintenance.” Technology and Culture 59, no. 1 (January 2018): 1–25.

    Reich, Aaron K. “In the Shadow of the Spirit Image: The Production, Consecration, and Enshrinement of a Daoist Statue in Northern Taiwan.” Journal of Chinese Religions 49: 2, 265-324 (November 2021).


  • February 11, 2022

    Christine Guth, Craft Culture in Early Modern Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2021), chapters 4-5.


  • December 13, 2021

    Yulia Frumer, Making Time: Astronomical Time Measurement in Tokugawa Japan (University of Chicago Press, 2018), chapters 2 & 3.


  • November 8, 2021

    For this meeting, we will discuss:
    Anne Gerritsen. The City of Blue and White: Chinese Porcelain and the Early Modern World. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2020, Chatper 9.
    Hodder, Ian. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012, Chapter 5.


Group Conveners

  • kyoungjinbae's picture

    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.

     

  • Yijun.Wang's picture

    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.

     

  • Yulian's picture

    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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