Chinese Historians

The shift from doctoral studies to faculty roles brings challenges, such as developing course materials, balancing research and teaching demands, and adapting pedagogical approaches to different institutional cultures. To address these common concerns, CHUS (Chinese Historians in the United States) invites you to join an online discussion with three outstanding early-career scholars.

Our speakers include Dr. Kyungsun Lee (Assistant Professor of Geography, University of Arkansas at Little Rock), Dr. Bess Xintong Liu (Visiting Assistant Professor of Music, Kenyon College), and Dr. Yidi Wu (Assistant Professor of History, Elon University). They will share their experiences and discuss practical solutions to common challenges faced by new faculty members across different institutional settings. Whether you’re preparing for the academic job market or just starting your first teaching position, this event will offer practical perspectives and specific strategies for building a successful academic career.

Sincerely,

Dr. Yi Ren

Our speakers:

Dr. Kyungsun Lee is an Assistant Professor of Geography in the Department of History at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. As an interdisciplinary environmental social scientist, Dr. Lee’s research focuses on investigating the governance of socio-technical systems for urban water sustainability transitions. Dr. Lee teaches courses in human geography, environmental history, and environmental justice and has a strong interest in integrating sustainability across the curriculum. Before joining the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, she was a Teaching Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and a Postdoctoral Researcher at Texas A&M University. Dr. Lee earned her Ph.D. in Environmental and Natural Resources Policy from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, as well as a master’s degree in the History of Science and a bachelor’s degree in Chemical and Biological Engineering, both from Seoul National University.

Bess Xintong Liu is currently the Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Kenyon College. She graduated from the musicological doctoral program at the University of Pennsylvania in 2023. Her primary research interest lies in musical exchange between China and the West in the twentieth century. Her dissertation titled “Resonant China: Transnational Music-making and the Construction of the Public, 1934-1958” explores music circles originated in Shanghai but expanded globally. Besides her commitment as a music historian, she is also a pianist, vocalist, translator, and a Chinese chamber music director. 

Dr. Yidi Wu is the O’Briant Developing Professor and Assistant Professor of History at Elon University in North Carolina. Yidi teaches China, East Asia, world history, and occasionally Argentine tango. She practices and promotes historical role-playing games and ungrading in teaching. Her first book focuses on Chinese student activism in 1957. Her second book project investigates the transformation of Chinese higher education in the early 1950s. She is also developing a role-playing game based on the dialogues between student activists and government officials in 1989. She has served as the book review editor for PRC History Review from 2018 to 2024.

https://youtu.be/T7B1gVFZ7eQ

学者简介

李娜，新加坡国立大学历史学系副教授，《公众史学》主编，主要研究领域是公众史学和城市历史保护，致力于公众史学在亚洲的建设与发展。专著包括：Kensington Market: Collective Memory, Public History and Toronto’s Urban Landscape, University of Toronto Press, 2015;《集体记忆、公众史学与城市景观》，上海三联书店，2017年；《公众史学研究入门》，北京大学出版社，2019年；Seeing History: Public History in China, De Gruyter, 2023。

陈新，弗吉尼亚大学 (University of Virginia) 访问教授。

学者简介

Jian Chen is the Director of the NYU Shanghai-ECNU Center on Global History, Economy, and Culture, a Distinguished Global Network Professor of History at NYU Shanghai, and a Global Network Professor in the Department of History at NYU. He is also Zijiang Distinguished Visiting Professor at East China Normal University. Prior to joining NYU Shanghai, he was the Michael J. Zak Professor of History for US-China Relations at Cornell University, Global Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Center, the Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs at the London School of Economics, and visiting research professor at the University of Hong Kong (2009-2013). He holds a PhD from Southern Illinois University and an MA from Fudan University and East China Normal University in Shanghai.

Chen is a leading scholar in modern Chinese history, the history of Chinese-American relations, and Cold War international history. Among his many publications are China’s Road to the Korean War (1994), The China Challenge in the 21st Century: Implications for U.S. Foreign Policy (1997), and Mao’s China and the Cold War (2001). He is now completing a diplomatic and political biography of Zhou Enlai.

Chen was the recipient of the Jeffrey Sean Lehman Grant for Scholarly Exchange with China, Cornell University, 2007, and a chief faculty speaker for the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Summer Institute, “New Sources and Findings on Cold War International History,” held at the George Washington University in the summer of 1999. His other fellowships include the Jennings Randolph Senior Fellowship for International Peace (United States Institute of Peace, 1996-1997) and the Norwegian Nobel Institute Fellowship (Oslo, Norway, 1993). In addition, in 2005 he shared in the honors for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in News and Documentary Research for Declassified: Nixon in China.

In the increasingly interconnected world of academia, effective networking and outreach have become crucial for career advancement, collaboration, and impactful research. However, the geographically scattered nature of academic work and the intense focus on research and teaching can sometimes hinder the development of these essential skills. Organized by the Chinese Historians in the United States (CHUS), this online workshop aims to address these challenges and provide practical strategies for academic networking and outreach.

Our three speakers, who have rich and diverse experiences in academic networking, will discuss how outreach activities can increase scholars’ visibility and influence in their field, strategies for opening new academic opportunities, and effective ways to make academic work known to a broader audience. Join us to learn how to overcome the challenges of academic isolation and develop the social skills crucial for a thriving academic career. 

Sincerely,

Dr. Yi Ren

Our speakers: 

Linshan Jiang is a Visiting Assistant Professor of East Asian history and culture at Colby College. She was a Postdoctoral Associate of Chinese Studies at Duke University. She received her Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she also obtained a Ph.D. emphasis in Translation Studies. Her research interests include modern and contemporary literature, film, and popular culture in mainland China, Taiwan, and Japan; trauma and memory studies; gender and sexuality studies; queer studies; as well as comparative literature and translation studies. Her primary research project focuses on female writers’ war experiences and memories of the Asia-Pacific War, entitled Women Writing War Memories. Her second research project explores how queerness is performed in Sinophone queer cultural productions. She has published articles about gender studies and queer studies in literature and culture as well as translations of scholarly and popular works in Chinese and English. She has been making a podcast named Gleaners with her friends for more than ten years and she is also a host of the East Asian Studies channel for the New Books Network.

Yuan Gao, who is also known as Kevin, earned his PhD in Chinese language and literature at Washington University in St. Louis. In Fall, he will join the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at WashU as a lecturer. His interdisciplinary research spans literature, film and media studies, environmental humanities, and queer studies. Based on his dissertation, he’s working on a book manuscript, tentatively entitled Corporeal Technology: Hydraulic Engineering and the Media of Labor in China, 1952-1993. This book situates mass politics in the history of water management to reconsider the working human masses as a technological force, rather than a class-based political category. Yuan Gao has published in both academic journals and popular media platforms to discuss Chinese-language cinema, reality shows, and gender and sexuality. Prior to joining the EALC faculty, he was a fellow at the Center for the Humanities at WashU.

Dr. Jinghong Zhang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She is interested in the social and cultural history of modern China, the history of medicine, and Science and Technology Studies. She is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively titled Down to the Roots: The History of Dentistry and Oral Hygiene in Modern China, which is the very first historical monograph that examines the development of dentistry in China from the late imperial era to contemporary times. Her research has been supported by the Association for Asian Studies, the D. Kim Foundations, the Social Science Research Council, the University of California, and others.