Past Awards

Symptoms of an Unruly Age compares the writings of Li Zhi and his late-Ming compatriots to texts composed by European contemporaries, including Montaigne, Shakespeare, and Cervantes. Emphasizing aesthetic patterns that transcend national boundaries, Handler-Spitz explores these works as culturally distinct responses to similar social and economic tensions affecting early modern cultures on both ends of Eurasia. The book shows us that these texts each constitute cultural manifestations of early modernity.

How did ordinary people in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) deal with the demands of the state? This book explores the ways that families fulfilled their obligations to provide a soldier to the army. The complex strategies they developed suggest a new interpretation of an important period in China’s history as well as a broader theory of politics. Combining traditional scholarship with innovative fieldwork where descendants of Ming subjects still live, it illustrates the ways that arrangements between communities and the state hundreds of years ago have consequences and relevance for how we look at diverse cultures and societies, even today.

Li Zhi’s iconoclastic interpretations of history, religion, literature, and social relations have fascinated Chinese intellectuals for centuries. His approach synthesized Confucian, Buddhist, and Daoist ethics and incorporated the Neo-Confucian idealism. The result was a series of heretical writings that caught fire among Li Zhi’s contemporaries, despite an imperial ban on their publication, and intrigued Chinese audiences long after his death. This is the first English translation of this heterodox intellectual’s vital contribution to Chinese thought and culture.

During the Ming-Qing transition, literati-officials in China employed public forms of writing, art, and social spectacle to present positive moral images of themselves and negative images of their rivals. The rise of print culture, the dynastic change, and the proliferating approaches to Confucian moral cultivation together gave shape to this new political culture. The book shows how power negotiations took place through participants’ invocations of Confucian ethical ideals in political attacks, self-expression, self-defense, discussion of politically sensitive issues, and literati community rebuilding after the dynastic change.

The Geiss Hsu Foundation supported the publication of this volume of 29 essays derived from lectures and papers presented at the Ming China: Courts and Contacts, 1400–1450 conference, held in 2014 in conjunction with the Ming: 50 Years that Changed China exhibition at the British Museum.

In imperial China, intellectuals devoted years of their lives to passing examinations to obtain a civil service position. This traditional employment of the literati class conferred social power and moral legitimacy, but changing circumstances forced many to seek alternative careers. Politically engaged but excluded from traditional bureaucratic roles, creative writers authored critiques of state power in the form of fiction, showing that as the literati class grappled with its own increasing marginalization, they began to imagine possibilities for a new political order.

This book is the definitive study of imperial Chinese local gazetteers, one of the most important sources for premodern Chinese studies. Methodologically innovative, it represents a major contribution to the history of books, publishing, reading, and society. By examining how gazetteers were read, Joseph R. Dennis illustrates their significance in local societies and national discourses. His analysis of how gazetteers were initiated and produced reconceptualizes the geography of imperial Chinese publishing.

Ancient Chinese halls are celebrated for their majestic rooflines. However, the visual impact of these structures comes chiefly from their ceramic ornament. Clarence Eng cogently argues that these important ceramics be studied in their own right. He introduces the aesthetics, history and technology of Chinese architectural ceramics, demonstrates that similar levels of skilled expertise were applied both to glazed and unglazed ornament, and describes their contribution to structures designed primarily to delight the viewer, such as screen walls and pagodas.