DIRECTORS
The Board of Directors of the James P. Geiss and Margaret Y. Hsu Foundation is composed of specialists in late imperial Chinese history, art, language, business, and culture.
Pieter “Paize” Keulemans
Associate Professor, Department of East Asian Studies, Princeton University
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.
Vice President
Kathlene Baldanza
Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies, The Pennsylvania State University
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.
Secretary
Yijun Wang
Assistant Professor of History, New York University
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.
TREASURER
Zoe S. Kwok
Nancy and Peter Lee Associate Curator of Asian Art, Princeton University Art Museum
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.
He Bian
Associate Professor of History and East Asian Studies, Princeton University
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.
Christian Murck
Chair, Board of Trustees, United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia
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
Associate Professor, Department of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia
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
President Emerita, American Council on Learned Societies (ACLS)
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.
PAST DIRECTORS
Associate Director, P.Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Center for East Asian Art, Princeton University
A specialist in Chinese painting and calligraphy, Dora Ching has served as associate director of the P.Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Center for East Asian Art at Princeton University since 2002. Throughout her career, Ching has been deeply engaged in book editing and publication, with more than a dozen books to her credit as co-editor or managing editor. She is the author of numerous book chapters and articles, has co-curated three major museum exhibitions, and occasionally serves as a lecturer at Princeton University. Ching received her A.B. from Harvard University and her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2011.
Martin Heijdra
Director, East Asian Library, Princeton University
Martin Heijdra studied Sinology and Japanology at Leiden, Beijing, and Kyoto before receiving a Ph.D. in Ming history at Princeton University. Since then, he has published in Ming socio-economic history, and more recently, on the history of the East Asian book and non-Western typography. He currently is the treasurer of the Society for Ming Studies, book review editor for the journal East Asian Publishing and Society, and a member of the advisory board for the Bibliography of Asian Studies.
John D. “Jack” Langlois, Jr. (1942–2010)
A member of the GHF Board through 2010, Ming scholar Jack Langlois earned his A.B. and Ph.D. in East Asian studies from Princeton University, earning the latter degree in 1974. He also held an M.A. from Harvard and an MBA from New York University. Langlois joined the faculty of Bowdoin College in 1974, chairing the History Department before departing in 1982 for a successful career in international banking. He held positions with J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Global Strategic Associates, and served on the board of Chinese banks. He was a popular teacher, colleague, and a valued GHF director.
Susan Naquin
Professor of History and East Asian Studies, Emerita, Princeton University
Susan Naquin works on the social and cultural history of late imperial and early modern China (1400–1900). She earned a B.A. from Stanford and a Ph.D. in History from Yale in 1974. She taught at the University of Pennsylvania between 1977 and 1992 before coming to Princeton in 1993. Professor Emerita since 2013, Naquin has written about millenarian peasant uprisings, families and rituals, pilgrimages, temples, and the history of Beijing. Her current work is on the material culture of religion in late imperial North China.
David Robinson
Robert H.N. Ho Professor in Asian Studies and Professor in History, Colgate University
As an undergraduate at Hobart College, David Robinson studied in Beijing and Taipei, where he developed a strong interest in local history. He earned his Ph.D. from Princeton University. Robinson’s first book, Bandits, Eunuchs, and the Son of Heaven, reconstructs a world where bandits and enforcers in and around Beijing were tied to the emperor and his senior court officials. His later work has focused on regional and global history, exploring the court culture of the Ming dynasty, early modern Chinese military history, Northeast Asia, and the Mongol empire and its Eurasian successor states of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
STAFF
Christine Minerva
Christine Minerva began her not-for-profit career in Chicago museums, working in communications, education, and grant writing at the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust, Adler Planetarium, and Shedd Aquarium. She has taken on freelance writing and editing assignments for not-for-profits, worked in residential life at the University of Chicago, served as an Admissions Reader for Princeton University, and currently splits her time between the Geiss Hsu Foundation and the Princeton University Art Museum. She holds an A.B. in Fundamentals: Issues and Texts from the University of Chicago.