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  • PhD Harvard 2019. Historian of Science, Scholar of Translation & Interdisciplinarian. Starting April 2023 informatio... moreedit
This project aims for the publication of a book containing some of the key texts for understanding the history of science in China across Chinese history. The project seeks to fulfill a need in the field for teaching materials in English... more
This project aims for the publication of a book containing some of the key texts for understanding the history of science in China across Chinese history. The project seeks to fulfill a need in the field for teaching materials in English language and translated source material. Each source will have a short commentary.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This article examines the earliest extant translations from Chinese in the period of the first systematic encounters between Chinese and Europeans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It argues that agents of the Spanish and... more
This article examines the earliest extant translations from Chinese in the period of the first systematic encounters between Chinese and Europeans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It argues that agents of the Spanish and Portuguese empires in the context of early modern colonialism devised practical and effective social and linguistic approaches for translating Chinese. The article investigates three such approaches: the use of Chinese interpreters who learned European languages; the use of oral translation in the collaboration between Chinese and European interpreters; and the use of Europeans fluent in Chinese translating themselves.
Beginning with the late Ming dynasty, Europeans in China assumed the name of “people from the Great Western Ocean” (Daxiyang ren 大西洋人), often shortened to “Ocean people” (yang ren 洋人) or “Western people” (xi ren 西人). What is the origin of... more
Beginning with the late Ming dynasty, Europeans in China assumed the name of “people from the Great Western Ocean” (Daxiyang ren 大西洋人), often shortened to “Ocean people” (yang ren 洋人) or “Western people” (xi ren 西人). What is the origin of this name? This paper seeks to answer this question by suggesting a new interpretation of the cartography of Matteo Ricci. Much of the scholarly debate about the Ricci world map revolves around the notion that it was a scientific artifact meant to present an accurate image of the world to a willfully ignorant, but otherwise impressive civilization. This paper argues instead that the purpose of Ricci’s cartographic project was to sustain a new identity, that of the Westerner and of the “Great West,” notions created in translation by borrowing and modifying Ming China’s geopolitical vocabulary.
The Map of Observing the Mysteries of the Heaven and Earth is a world map in eight panels created in 1603 by the Ming dynasty military official Li Yingshi 李應試. The map is a variant of the known work by the Italian Jesuit savant Matteo... more
The Map of Observing the Mysteries of the Heaven and Earth is a world map in eight panels created in 1603 by the Ming dynasty military official Li Yingshi 李應試. The map is a variant of the known work by the Italian Jesuit savant Matteo Ricci and the scholar Li Zhizao 李之藻. This essay focuses on one copy of this 1603 world map, which was in the possession of the Manchus of the Later Jin state, the precursor of the Qing. This essay argues that the map was used in the Shenyang palace before 1644, the year when the Manchus conquered Beijing and established the Qing, China’s last ruling imperial dynasty, and that it was inscribed with selective translations of the map’s cosmological elements and place-names in a version of the Old Manchu script. The Map of Observing the Mysteries of the Heaven and Earth matters because it prompts us to rethink the process of knowledge circulation between China and early modern Europe. The map shows that the Manchus accessed and used the products of Western learning even before their conquest of China and sought to adapt them to their needs through translation.
This paper argues that we should take into account the process of historical transmission to enrich our understanding of material culture. More specifically, I want to show how the rewriting of history and the invention of tradition... more
This paper argues that we should take into account the process of historical transmission to enrich our understanding of material culture. More specifically, I want to show how the rewriting of history and the invention of tradition impact material objects and our beliefs about them. I focus here on the transmission history of the mechanical calculator invented by the German savant Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Leibniz repeatedly described his machine as functional and wonderfully useful, but in reality it was never finished and didn't fully work. Its internal structure also remained unknown. In 1879, however, the machine re-emerged and was reinvented as the origin of all later calculating machines based on the stepped drum, to protect the priority of the German Leibniz against the Frenchman Thomas de Colmar as the father of mechanical calculation. The calculator was later replicated to demonstrate that it could function ‘after all’, in an effort to deepen this narrative and furthe...