Past Awards

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.

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.

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.

Since 2021, GHF has supported an open access collection of books published by the University of Washington Press on the Ming dynasty and adjacent periods and territories. This award will allow the Press to add two of their most significant and most often used books in Ming studies to the collection, bringing these resources to a larger audience, facilitating their use in courses, and fostering new avenues for scholarly research.

This project will build an open-access public platform, based on Large Language Models and Private Knowledge Bases, with which scholars can explore the collected writings of 325 individuals from the late Yuan to the early Qing found in the Siku quanshu. The user interface will allow researchers and the interested public to investigate topics in Ming history and culture. They will be able to call up documents and have them punctuated, analyzed, and translated, and they will be able to discover who else spoke to those topics.

Xu Xiake stands as China’s most distinguished traveler and travel writer, whose extensive journeys through Ming-dynasty China offer a unique window into the era’s geography, history, and cultural traditions. This new, fully annotated English translation includes maps and illustrations, allowing readers to follow Xu’s routes. It will be indispensable for scholars of Chinese history, geography, and travel writing and will bring Xu Xiake’s extraordinary journeys to a broader audience. The award from GHF will supported both print and open-access editions.

University of Washington Press will add three titles to the collection of UW Press / Geiss Hsu Foundation Open Access Books: Jiang Yonglin’s translation of The Great Ming Code / Da Ming lü, first published in 2005; the annotated translation of Further Adventures on the Journey to the West, prepared by Qiancheng Li and Robert Hegel and published in 2020; and the 2021 annotated edition of The Lady of Linshui Pacifies Demons, translated by Kristin Ingrid Fryklund, with an introduction and notes by Mark Edward Lewis and Brigitte Baptandier.

Bringing together a rich trove of sources, Three Impeachments traces the process of impeachment, review, condemnation, and restoration to provide unique insights into the Kangxi golden age. Part I reveals that the highly lauded accomplishments of the Kangxi emperor were not his alone, but the result of collaboration between Manchu elite, the newly formed Chinese Martial Banner Army, and Chinese scholars. Part II, which focuses on Guo Xi’s impeachments, sheds new light on dynastic history and political agency.