2023
Geiss-Hsu Conference Travel Grant (Travel)
Modern Language Association of America
Principal Investigator(s): Rania Huntington, Executive Committee of the Ming-Qing Chinese Languages, Literature and Culture Forum, Modern Language Association of AmericaFunding supports membership dues, conference travel, lodging, and registration for at least five scholars of Ming or Ming-adjacent fields to attend the Modern Language Association of American Conference in Philadelphia from January 4-7, 2024. Preference will be given to graduate students, contingent faculty, independent scholars, faculty at poorly resourced institutions, and international scholars.
2023
Journal of the Society for Ming Studies Editorship (Stipend & Travel)
Society for Ming Studies
Principal Investigator(s): Thomas Kelly, Society for Ming StudiesA three-year award will support the work of the managing editor of the Journal of the Society for Ming Studies and fund his travel to the Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference.
2023
Organizing a Workshop for a Co-Edited Volume on the Landscape Culture of West Lake
Universidad de Granada
Principal Investigator(s): Antonio José Mezcua López, Universidad de Granada, with Xiaolin Duan, North Carolina State UniversityThe award funds an interdisciplinary workshop in January 2024 at Universidad de Granada, Spain, that will bring together experts on West Lake in order to produce the first broad-based, edited volume showcasing West Lake from multiple lenses.
2023
Recording “Ghost Village” (Recording & Workshop)
UChicago Global and the University of Chicago Center in Beijing
Principal Investigator(s): Judith Zeitlin, University of ChicagoGHF funds will support a recording and workshop performance of the opera Ghost Village, based on Liaozhai’s Strange Tales by Pu Songling. Composer Chen Yao (Central Conservatory of Music), conductor Chen Lin (Tianjin Julliard School), and répétiteur Wei-En Hsu (Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts) will take part.
2023
Translating the China and East Asian World Portrayed in Choson Korean Literature
Arizona State University
Principal Investigator(s): Sookja Cho, Arizona State University, with Joonyoun Kim, Korea UniversityThe award supports an interdisciplinary workshop on China and East Asia in premodern Korean literature at Arizona State University on December 8, 2023. The goal of workshop is to publish the papers presented in a special issue of a peer-reviewed journal.
2023
Treasures for Buddha: The Legendary Offerings from Nanjing Dabao’en Temple
China Institute in America
The award supports the exhibition Treasures for Buddha: The Legendary Offerings from Nanjing Dabao’en Temple at the China Institute Gallery from October 24, 2023 to May 16, 2024, which will showcase objects discovered during the excavations of the Dabao’en Temple in Nanjing.
2022
A Conference on Border-Crossing in the Ming
Academia Sinica and Mount Holyoke College, May and August 2023
Principal Investigator(s): Ling-Wei Kung, Academia Sinica, and Lan Wu, Mount Holyoke CollegeGraduate students and early-career scholars will attend an in-person, workshop-style conference to foster discussion about border-crossing over the longue durée history of late imperial China. Scholars across academic ranks in Asia and North America will circulate their papers in advance for in-depth discussion, and research will be shared as an open-source publication. The conference will be held in two parts, with meetings in New York and Teipei.
2022
Bandits in Print: The Water Margin and the Transformations of Vernacular Fiction
By Scott Gregory
Cornell East Asia Series, an imprint of Cornell University Press, forthcoming April 2023

Bandits in Print reexamines Ming vernacular literature and print culture through the influential Ming novelShuihu zhuan (The Water Margin). Moving away from ultimately unanswerable questions about authorship and urtext, Scott Gregory focuses on the editor-publishers who decided the shape the novel would take as they crafted their print editions. By placing each edition firmly within its own socio-historical context, Bandits in Print shows that in the Ming dynasty, a novel like The Water Margin was not so much as a single literary work but a complex family of print editions, each with its own meaning.