Past Awards

In recent decades, there has been a marked increase in scholarly focus on the human body across various disciplines. In Chinese studies, scholars have examined the human body in contexts including medical, political, military, religious, and legal frameworks. While studies of Chinese literature have traditionally approached themes of death, ghosts, spirits, and resurrected skeletons, recent scholarship has directly investigated the “literary body” in fiction and poetry.  Building on this momentum, this two-day conference at McGill University will explore embodied themes within the context of premodern Chinese literature and culture.

This daylong event focusing on scholarship and teaching of the Ming will be held in conjunction with the Southeast Conference of the Association of Asian Studies (SEC-AAS) Annual Meeting at Georgia Tech. Twenty scholars will meet in person at daytime sessions, while a smaller group based in Asia will join a virtual evening panel. It aims to help scholars forge new connections and broaden awareness of Chinese culture and Ming studies throughout the Southeast U.S.

This interdisciplinary conference on the intertwined histories of Inner and East Asia will place a particular focus on the entanglements between the Ming and its Mongol and Manchu neighbors. Scholars from around the world will gather at the University of British Columbia to present on four thematic panels and at a concluding forum about the future of the field. Resulting papers will be published in a special magazine issue and in an edited volume.

An award from the Geiss Hsu Foundation will support efforts to maintain, expand and promote the impact of the Journal of the Society for Ming Studies (Ming Studies) by funding a stiped for the editor of the Journal, who acts as both the academic editor and managing editor. This support will enable the editor to creatively develop the Journal’s digital presence through website design and to explore new publishing opportunities for the currently inactive Ming Studies monograph series as Ming Studies enters its fifth decade.

This book is the first study in any language that treats the entire cultural constellation of the more than 100 surviving handscroll paintings with the title Qingming shanghe (Up the River during Qingming), which span six hundred years, from the early twelfth to the mid-eighteenth centuries. The book not only examines the production contexts of different versions in the Song, Ming, and Qing dynasties, but also explores the cultural imaginings that the name Qingming shanghe could evoke. Furthermore, it takes a deeper dive into the artistic, political, and sociocultural realms that these paintings helped shape.

This multi-year project aims to broaden knowledge of Ming society by examining non-gentry workers. The research will explore the potential of using Chicago-school occupational sociology to study work in the Ming through the analysis of a wide variety of primary sources. Organizers will make studies available to researchers and teachers; introduce the framework to historians both inside and outside the Ming field; test and refine the framework for Ming and for the past more broadly; and offer contributions to sociologists of knowledge and others who wish to go beyond Euro-centrism. The project includes a workshop, conference, and publication.

An award from the Geiss Hsu Foundation will support a series of online and in-person workshops on the materialities of Ming books and manuscripts for fourteen East Asian studies librarians specializing in Chinese studies in North America. Participants will acquire knowledge and skills to move beyond traditional “one-shot” bibliographic instruction toward a new model of teaching that integrates material analysis into undergraduate and graduate curricula.

This March 2025 workshop will bring together scholars to review Mapping the Weird: the Geography of the Seventeenth Century Strange Tale. Focusing on two understudied tale collections from the early 17th century,  the manuscript combines mapping and geographical analysis with close reading to create an “atlas of the imagination” for the Wanli period (1572-1620), exploring how conceptual maps of the divine and demonic intersect with the maps of administrative, natural, and cultural geography.