We need you! The society is seeking three new board members. Please consider nominating a colleague or yourself!

Again, the No. 54 Issue of the Journal of Song Yuan Studies is out! Please renew your membership to receive a hardcopy of the journal and continue to support us.🐎

Many thanks to everyone who came to the SSYCDS annual meeting at the AAS in Vancouver! We had a full house again this year, with a bigger room and a longer layout of food. It seems the larger gathering is now our new normal.

Had two days of stimulating discussion at the History of East Eurasia conference at UBC. Taking a breath—and now the AAS begins!

If you are attending the AAS in Vancouver, I hope you'll also consider joining this wonderful conference on East Eurasia.

Took my grad seminar to the UCLA rare book collection. I had requested every Tang and Song item available and seeing them all was deeply satisfying. We had on the table one Tang Dunhuang scroll, three Song Buddhist sutras, one Yuan sutra, along with some Ming and Qing books. Wonderful collection

Laying my hands on a beautiful Song sutra—the thrill of it!

The UCSB Blum Center on Poverty, Inequality, & Democracy is accepting proposals for two funding opportunities: the Central Coast Regional Equity Initiative and the Dr. U.S. Awasthi Initiative in Cooperative Economics.

Learn more at blumcenter.ucsb.edu/research Apply by February 28th, 2026.

One challenge I find with discussion-based learning is each class inevitably has a handful of students who are less comfortable contributing verbally. The dialectical notebook, (aka, the "silent discussion”) is one way to guide them toward productive engagement.

inquiryproject.org/2026/02/17/d...

Always a happy day when the latest journal arrives from across the pond @ssycds.bsky.social Lots of interesting stuff inside, including a special section on the human senses!! #histbookchat #sinology #China #SongDynasty

At the AAS in Vancouver, We also proudly sponsor two panels. Please come support our wonderful colleagues!

Come join us at the AAS in Vancouver! Come early, enjoy some dim sum, and catch up with everyone!

Right up my alley and wish I could be there. Also, the speaker is my college classmate 😀

*a healthy new year 😀

My new piece on the history of the chickpea in premodern China just came out. Wishing you a health near year full of good food! www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

‘Insider and Outsider’ | Josephine Quinn How did Saint Augustine’s African origins and his life among Christians there shape his theology?

St. Augustine (yes, that one), the African. www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

My chapter “Knowledge and Knowing in Neo-Confucianism” is out in the Routledge Companion to Chinese Philosophy edited by Brook Ziporyn and Stephen Walker. It was a pleasure working with philosophers! www.zuoya.org/_files/ugd/6...

Congratulations to those whose panels got accepted by the AAS in 2026! If your panel or any of its speakers engage with the 10th-14th century in China, please consider applying for the Society's sponsorship. We look forward to receiving your proposals!

I also assigned his writings whenever I taught Classical Chinese thought. Student interest in him remained strong, even among those younger students who had never met him either.

Bowdoin president's message one Kidder Smith's passing. He was my predecessor as the China historian at Bowdoin. I never met him, but I’ve heard so much about him as a campus legend.

With lovely Rutgers colleagues

Wrapped up my talks at Princeton and Rutgers. Had a great time catching up with old friends and teachers, and meeting new ones too. Took NJ Transit to and from the airport and landed on the old cars. They look exactly the same as 20 years ago! Felt like I was zapped right back into a time capsule…

I'm excited to return to New Jersey next week to give two talks respectively at Princeton and Rutgers. I'll be speaking about my recent work on Zhu Xi and his theory of emotions. I hadn't excepted a classical topic to spark so much joy of discovery, and I look forward to sharing that.

The Fourth Middle-Period China Humanities conference in Hong Kong, summer 2026. Hope to see many of you there!

Oxford Studies in Medieval History is now Oxford Studies in the New Medieval History. Glad to be part of the opening up of this great series to global approaches. We are looking forward to receiving book manuscripts in global #medieval history.
More info in the flyer:
fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/...

Just in case anyone else finds the idea of blood-stained tears oddly appealing, here's a piece I wrote on the subject www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10....

'Echoes of Great Brightness: The Ming Dynasty and Beyond' In Oxford, 16-17 September. Booking now open. I'm honoured (my goodness, I really am, so grateful to this amazing roster of colleagues)
web.cvent.com/event/a4ff13...

Xuelei Huang. Scents of China: A Modern History of Smell. Xuelei Huang’s Scents of China: A Modern History of Smell is a cultural history of smell in modern China. It delineates an “olfactory revolution” that link

My review of Xuelei Huang's Scents of China: A Modern History of Smell is out in the American Historical Review. This is the first monograph ever written on the history of olfaction in China studies. A pleasant read! academic.oup.com/ahr/article-...

谢谢🙏

My friend Chen Hao passed away a month ago. He was a historian of medicine and middle-period Chinese history. He would have turned 42 this July. I wrote this obituary for him. Though I’ve written it, I still don’t have the words for such grief. www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_f...

Thank you!