Research Bio

Wen-hsin Yeh is the Richard H. &  Laurie C. Morrison Chair Professor and a Distinguished Professor in the Department of History.  She is a social and political historian of culture and knowledge in late imperial and modern China, Taiwan, and maritime East Asia. Her research examines Sino-Western engagement in 19th- and 20th-century China and the consequences of systemic disequilibrium.  Her areas of research include higher education (The Alienated Academy: Culture and Politics in Republican China, Harvard University Press 1990 & 2000), Communist and Confucian political thought (Provincial Passages: Culture and Space in the Origin of Chinese Communism, University of California Press 1996), the city (Shanghai Splendor: Economic Ethnics and the Making of Modern China, University of California Press, 2007), visual culture and the global World War II (In the Shadow of the Rising Sun, Cambridge University Press, 2004).  Her current project concerns Chinese maritime statecraft, indigenous peoples, and transitional justice on Taiwan.

Research Expertise and Interest

history, East Asian studies, Qing and Modern China, maritime Asia, Taiwan, Pacific Rim societies