Past Awards

This conference, held at Arizona State University from April 4 – 5, 2025, investigated the role of the Ming Empire (1368-1644) as a cultural and geopolitical imaginary that actively contributed to the formation of a textual world during the early modern era (16th-19th centuries). It aimed to understand the Ming as a multilayered and co-constructed civilization, along with its participatory role in global early modernity, without casting the empire as a prelude to capitalism, colonization, and globalization. 

In collaboration with the Princeton University Library, Rare Book School offered a new course on Books in Ming China as part of the School’s 2024 course roster. Intended for scholars already familiar with Ming studies, this course introduced participants to the collection of some 2,000 Ming books held at the Princeton libraries. Students conducted research in Princeton’s Gest Collection of East Asian Materials and generated ideas for research projects in Ming Studies. 

In exploring games and practices of play across social and historical contexts, this volume examines representations of gender, class, materiality, and imaginations of the nation in Chinese and Sinophone contexts, while addressing ways in which games inhabit, represent, disrupt, or transform cultural and social practices. Both analog and computer games are represented in analyses that draw connections between the traditional and the modern and between local or regional and higher-order economic, cultural, and political structures. Among the topics explored are rock carvings of board games, weiqi cultures, scholars’ and courtesans’ games, gambling, games based on literature, video-game politics, and appropriation of Chinese culture in video games.

Funding supported 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 was given to graduate students, contingent faculty, independent scholars, faculty at poorly resourced institutions, and international scholars.

To support emerging scholars, the Society for Ming Studies hosted a roundtable on new books by international Ming scholars at the Society’s meeting-in-conjunction at the Association for Asian Studies Conference in Seattle. Funding from GHF allowed three junior scholars who are based at institutions outside of North America and have recently released books with non-US publishers to travel to the conference to participate in the roundtable.

A 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.

This companion volume to The Book of Swindles: Selections from a Late Ming Collection presents sensational stories of scams that range from the ingenious to the absurd to the lurid, many featuring sorcery, sex, and extreme violence. Together, the two volumes represent the first complete translation into any language of a landmark Chinese anthology, making an essential contribution to the global literature of trickery and fraud. An introduction explores the geography of grift, the role of sex and family relations, and the portrayal of Buddhist clergy and others claiming supernatural powers. Opening a window onto the colorful world of crime and deception in late imperial China, this book testifies to the enduring popularity of stories about scoundrels and their schemes.

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.