Professional Experience

Associate Professor, Department of History & Philosophy, Montana State University (July 2020 -)

Assistant Professor, Department of History & Philosophy, Montana State University (August 2013-2020)

Education

PhD in History, Modern China field group (UCSD, 2013)
MA in History (UCSD, 2010)
BA in History (University of Mary Washington, 2006)

Research interests

Cultural history from the late imperial period to the present; the use of entertainment in state building projects; the renovation of classical culture throughout the twentieth and twenty-first century; contemporary digital gaming culture in the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan; history of Chinese mountaineering.

Research & Publications

Resisting Spirits: Drama Reform and Cultural Transformation in the People’s Republic of China (University of Michigan Press, “China Understandings Today” series;  2019)

“Performing Socialism at Altitude: Chinese Expeditions to Mount Everest, 1958–1968,” Performance Research 24.2 (July 2019).

“The Game People Played: Mahjong in Modern Chinese Society and Culture,” Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review e-journal 17 (December 2015).

“A Ghostly Bodhisattva and the Price of Vengeance: Meng Chao, Li Huiniang, and the Politics of Drama, 1959-1979,” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 24.1 (Spring 2012).

Reviews

Marc L. Moskowitz, Go Nation: Chinese Masculinities and the Game of Weiqi in China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), Twentieth-Century China 40.1 (Jan. 2015).

Yu Xinzhong, Zhongguo jiating shi, volume 4: Ming-Qing shiqi (Chinese family history: the Ming- Qing period) (Guangzhou: Guangdong renmin chubanshe, 2007), China Review International 15.4.

Awards

MSU Faculty Excellence Grant (2017)

Stanford East Asia Library Travel Grant, Stanford University (2016)

MSU CLS Research Enhancement Award, Montana State University College of Letters & Science (2016, 2017, 2019)

Montana State University Scholarship & Creativity Grant (2014)

Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad fellowship (2010-2011)

Works in Progress

“Little House on the Yangtze” – article on Laura Ingalls Wilder & Little House series translations in the contemporary PRC

A history of high altitude mountaineering in the PRC

Teaching

MSU:

HSTR 140D: Modern East Asia
HSTR 345: Modern China
HSTR 415: Gender & Technology
HSTR 443: Gender in Asia
HSTR 446: Science and Medicine in China
HSTR 467: History of Mountaineering
Spring 2016: The Greater Ranges
HSTR 499R: Senior Capstone
Spring 2014: Games, Play & Society
HSTR 491: Special Topics
Fall 2014/Fall 2016: Memory and Culture in East Asia
Spring 2015/Spring 2017: Games, Play & History
Fall 2019/Fall 2020: East Asian History Through Anime & Manga
HIST 512, Topics in World History
Spring 2017: Colonial Modernities

UCSD:

HIEA 138: Women & the Chinese Revolution

Conference Presentations

Association of Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Conference, “Navigating Bureaucratic ‘Gusts of Wind’: The Shanghai Theatre World, 1949-1966” (Panel: Hidden Traces of the Repertoire: Reconstructing Chinese Theatre Practice in the Maoist Period). Panel organizer. Toronto, March 2017.

American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) Annual Conference, “When a Ghost is Not a Ghost: Discourses of Mythology and Superstition in the Early People’s Republic of China” (Seminar: Retelling Fantastic Tales in East Asian and Global Popular Cultures). Cambridge, MA, March 2016.

Thinking Mountains 2015, “A Mountaineering Party of 600 Million: Towards a History of Mountaineering in Modern China” (Panel: “Re-Thinking Mountains: Superstition, Sovereignty, Science, and Socialism”). Jasper, Alberta, May 2015.

Advancing Research Communication & Scholarship (ARCS) 2015, “Datalogical Narratives: Scholars’ Tales of Research” (Roundtable participant). Philadelphia, April 2015.

Foundations of Digital Games (FDG) 2014, “Game studies and area studies: a panel” (Roundtable co-organizer and participant). Ft. Lauderdale, April 2014.

Association of Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Conference, “Charting the Digital in Asian Studies: Promises, Realities, and the Future of Teaching and Research” (Roundtable co-organizer and participant). Philadelphia, March 2014.

Association of Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Conference, “The Troublesome Ghosts of 1963: Ghost Opera and the Politics of Drama” (Panel: “Opera and Politics in China: From Wartime Period to the Present”). San Diego, March 2013.

The Fifth Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) Conference, “Nail Houses and River Crabs: Online Games and Society in China.” Utrecht School of the Arts, Netherlands, September 2011.S

Other Writing

“Darth Vader and the Triceratops,” in Jeremy A. Murray, Perry Link, Paul G. Pickowicz, eds.,China Tripping: Encountering the Everyday in the People’s Republic (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019): 146-148.

“Video games in China,” in Pop Culture in Asia and Oceania, Jeremy Murray & Kathleen Nadeau, eds. (ABC-Clio, 2016): 343-346.

“The Woman in Green: A Chinese Ghost Tale from Mao to Ming, 1981-1381,” The Appendix vol 1.2: 124-132.

“Mahjong as edutainment,” Memory Insufficient: Asian Histories in Games, May 2013.

Invited Talks

“The Yuan & Ming: Cultural, Social, Political Contexts,” docent training lecture, Museum of the Rockies, Bozeman, MT, 13 May, 2019.

“The Making of Today’s China,” Wonderlust, Bozeman, MT, 14 May, 2018.

“From Weiqi to Warcraft: Games & Play in Chinese Culture,” Yunnan Normal University (invited guest of Duke Study in China), Kunming, Yunnan, PRC, October 2011.