Board of Directors & Staff

Paize Keulemans has studied Chinese language and literature at Leiden University, Nankai University, Cambridge University, National Taiwan University, Beijing University, and the University of Chicago, where he earned his Ph.D. in 2004. Keulemans specializes in late-imperial novels and opera, but his interests also include modern Chinese literature, contemporary Chinese film, Dutch-Chinese interactions from the 17th-century onwards, and the adaptation of China’s great novels, such as The Three Kingdoms, into video games. He has taught Chinese literature at Columbia, Yale, and Princeton Universities.

Kathlene Baldanza is a historian of China and Vietnam, teaching in the History and Asian Studies Departments at Penn State University. Her first book is Ming China and Vietnam: Negotiating Borders in Early Modern Asia (Cambridge, 2016). Her current research project explores the role of climate and disease in limiting both Chinese southern expansion as well as Vietnamese expansion to its northwest in the late imperial (15th–19th century) period. She earned a B.A. from Bryn Mawr College and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2010.

Yijun Wang received her Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University in 2019 and her B.A. in History from Tsinghua University. Her research interests include material culture, the history of technology, and gender in early modern China. Her current book project, tentatively titled From Tin to Pewter: Craft and Statecraft in Qing China, examines the transmissions of technology and changes in the culture of statecraft in China from 1700 to 1850s. Before joining the faculty of NYU, Wang was a pre-doctoral fellow at Max-Planck Institute for the History of Science.

A specialist in Chinese art history, Zoe S. Kwok joined the Princeton University Art Museum in 2013. Her most recent project was the exhibition and publication The Eternal Feast: Banqueting in Chinese Art from the 10th to the 14th Century (2019). She holds a B.A. in history and art history from Wellesley College, an M.A. in East Asian Studies from Harvard University, and earned a Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2013. Kwok has been an adjunct visiting professor at Franklin & Marshall College and a Fulbright Fellow in China. She has also worked at the National Palace Museum in Taiwan.

A historian of science and Late Imperial China, He Bian researches the question of authority and variation in China’s traditional culture between the 16th–19th centuries, particularly in medicine and the natural sciences. Her first book is Know Your Remedies: Pharmacy and Early Modern Culture in China, 1500–1800 (Princeton 2020). Her next book will focus on the social history of medical recipes in 18th century China. Bian is president of the Manchu Studies Group, and earned a Ph.D. in the History of Science from Harvard University in 2014, an M.A. from University of Illinois Chicago, and a B.S. from Peking University.

After receiving a Ph.D. in East Asian Studies from Princeton University in 1978, Christian Murck pursued a career in finance, public affairs, and foreign business operations. He held senior positions at APCO Worldwide, AmCham China, and the Chase Manhattan Bank. He served on the boards of J.P. Morgan Chase (China) Co. Ltd. and the Bank of Shanghai. In addition to his role at the United Board, he is a trustee of the Harvard-Yenching Institute. He is a past chair of the Yale-China Association board of trustees and a graduate of Yale University.

Bruce Rusk researches the cultural history of China, especially the Ming through early Qing dynasties. His work has focused on the history of textual studies, literary culture, writing systems, and connoisseurship. He is the author of Critics and Commentators: The Book of Poems as Classic and Literature (Harvard 2012) and is co-translator of Book of Swindles by Zhang Yingyu (Columbia 2017). Rusk earned his Ph.D. from UCLA in 2004, and holds a B.A. from University of British Columbia. He has taught at Cornell University and Stanford University, and is webmaster and past president of the Society for Ming Studies.

Pauline Yu served as president of ACLS from 2003-2019 after 10 years as dean of humanities at UCLA. She was founding chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at UC-Irvine and taught at Columbia and the University of Minnesota. She is the author or editor of five books, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the American Philosophical Society and The Committee of 100. She has served as a trustee of numerous organizations and holds five honorary degrees. Yu earned a B.A. from Harvard and an M.A. and Ph.D. in comparative literature from Stanford.