The Board of Directors of the James P. Geiss & Margaret Y. Hsu Foundation is delighted to announce awards made during the spring application cycle:
PROJECTS
Exhibitions
China Institute of America | Celebrating Sixty Years of China Institute Gallery: 1966-2026
Founded in 1966, the China Institute Gallery has presented the history of Chinese art from antiquity to the present through superb and thought-provoking exhibitions. The masterworks featured in Celebrating Sixty Years of China Institute Gallery: 1966-2026 exemplify what has made the Institute’s exhibitions groundbreaking. From presentations of exquisite jades and bronze vessels, to the symbolism of old trees, to Chinese ceramics, calligraphy, and architecture—China Institute’s displays have consistently illuminated pathways to a deeper understanding of the culture of China.
Corning Museum of Glass | Ablaze: 500 Years of Chinese Glass
Opening in May 2027, the exhibition synthesizes current research on Ming and Qing dynasty glass and explores the transformative period when Chinese glassmakers transitioned from serving local markets to the splendor of court patronage under Qing emperors. They mastered transparency to produce vessels and scientific instruments, experimented with colorants and opacifiers to create bold new colors and emulate other materials, and merged their expertise with that of Europeans, creating an art form of their own. The exhibition will feature a wide range of approximately 180 glass objects created from the fourteenth to the mid-twentieth century, with key loans from institutions in the U.S., Canada, and China.
Journal Issue
CHINOPERL | Emotion, Entertainment, and History in Chinese Drama and Song | PI: Jing Shen, Eckerd College and Editor of CHINOPERL
This special issue of CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature presents innovative and substantive studies of Ming drama, its adaptations, and early song suites related to Ming urban culture. Grounded in solid research and situated within their cultural and historical contexts, the contributions revolve around the theme of “Emotion, Entertainment, and History in Chinese Drama and Song.” Written by recent doctoral graduates and Ph.D. candidates, the research articles demonstrate innovative scholarship on complex subjects and bring fresh perspectives to the fields.
Open Access Publishing
University of Washington Press | UWP / GHF Open Access Books: Four Story Collections, Phase II | PI: Beth Fuget, University of Washington Press
in 2021, an award from GHF launched an open access collection of books published by the University of Washington Press on the Ming dynasty and adjacent periods and territories. The initial award funded ten books, and subsequent funding from GHF brought the total number of books in the collection to 25. The two newest awards add some of the Press’s most significant and most often used books in Ming studies to the collection: Feng Menglong’s Sanyan collections Stories Old and New, Stories to Caution the World, andStories to Awaken the World, translated and introduced by Shuhui Yang and Yunqin Yang; and Ling Menchu’sSlapping the Table in Amazement, translated by the Yangs and introduced by Robert Hegel.
Workshop
Washington University in St. Louis | Workshop to Prepare for the Book “Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Chinese History” | PIs: Steven B. Miles, Washington University in St. Louis and Editor-in-chief, Late Imperial China; Yulian Wu, Michigan State University
The award from GHF supports a workshop dedicated to the writing and discussion of the Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Chinese History, which is under contract with Oxford University Press. The Oxford Handbook is intended as an indispensable resource for the study of China’s last two imperial dynasties, the Ming and Qing. It seeks to deepen and reframe our understanding of Ming-Qing history by integrating new scholarship, addressing longstanding gaps, and reflecting the field’s evolving priorities over the past three decades. In doing so, the Oxford Handbook highlights how recent historiographical developments have fundamentally reshaped interpretations of the Ming and Qing.
PUBLICATIONS
Subventions
Columbia University Press | The Book of China: A Persian Merchant’s Description of the Ming State for the Ottoman Court by Ali Akbar Khatayi, edited and translated by Kaveh Hemmat, John Curry, Hyunhee Park
The Book of China is the most substantial description of East Asia in any west Eurasian language before the era of European maritime empires. Written in 1516 in the Ottoman capital, Istanbul, by Ali Akbar Khatayi, a merchant and professional cultural broker who had visited Beijing around 1506, The Book of China offers a view from the civically-entangled space of China’s Inner Asian frontier, a rare record of how merchants of the medieval Silk Road and Central Asian Muslims perceived Chinese culture at this pivotal moment. This volume includes a translation of the original Persian text and of the preface added by the Ottoman translator who gave it the title “Lawbook of China and Cathay,” annotations based on Classical Chinese, Persian, and Ottoman sources, and a critical introduction.
University of British Columbia Press | Logics of a Great State: Chinese Statecraft from Early Ming to Xi Jinping, edited by Timothy Cheek, Bruce Rusk, and Shoufu Yin
This collection makes the Ming the starting point for a wide-ranging analysis of statecraft ideas and practices in early modern and modern China. It emerged from a GHF-sponsored conference held at the University of British Columbia and features thirteen papers that link Ming or Ming-adjacent themes to modern and contemporary governance issues. Overall, the volume enables scholars and a broader audience to rethink the Ming through the lens of its pivotal role in shaping Chinese governance, and to reconsider statecraft through extensive engagement with Ming history.
University of Hawai’i Press | Mapping the Ming World: Globalizing a Seventeenth-Century Vision of China by Mario Cams
Mapping the Ming World examines how seventeenth-century China reconceptualized its place in a rapidly transforming global order. At the center of the book is a striking and historically consequential map printed in 1644, immediately following the fall of Beijing and the death of the last Ming emperor. This extraordinary artifact places a diagram of the Chinese state at its core, surrounded by visual elements drawn from Renaissance-style world maps. The result is a bold fusion of spatial traditions that reshaped geographic thinking across East Asia while profoundly shaping European understandings of China for generations. By using a single map as a point of entry into broader questions of identity, empire, and world order, Mapping the Ming World offers a fresh and compelling contribution to the global history of cartography.
University of Washington Press | Boundaries and Bodhisattvas: Women, Lay Buddhism, and Religious Spaces in Late Imperial China by Xu Ma
From the sixteenth to early nineteenth centuries, Neo-Confucian ideology sought to reinforce the seclusion of women within the domestic sphere, while flourishing lay Buddhism increasingly fueled their passion for visiting temples and going on distant pilgrimages. Xu Ma explores this cultural tension to reveal how religious spaces—physical, imagined, and embodied—emerged as a “third social space” that both sustained and subverted the Confucian binaries of inside and outside, public and private. By blending gender studies, spatial theory, and literary analysis, Boundaries and Bodhisattvas demonstrates how women’s bodies and hearts reconfigured both Confucian gender paradigms and the broader religious landscape of late imperial China.
University of Washington Press | The Tin Centuries: Technology and Statecraft in Qing China by Yijun Wang
Tin was everywhere in early modern China—lining tea chests, shaping religious vessels, alloyed into coins. Yet beneath this ordinary metal lies a story of migration, technology, and governance that paved the way for China’s entry into global capitalism. The Tin Centuries uncovers how tin connected miners in Yunnan and Southeast Asia, entrepreneurs and traders across oceans, and Qing officials confronting unprecedented demands on natural resources. By following tin’s movement from mountains and islands to imperial mintage and treasuries, The Tin Centuries reframes the history of technology, migration, and empire. It reveals how a seemingly humble metal reflected the changing trajectory of Qing statecraft and foreshadowed China’s path toward modernity within an expanding global economy.