Shellen Wu

Shellen Xiao Wu is professor and L.H. Gipson Chair in Transnational History at Lehigh University. Her new book, Birth of the Geopolitical Age: Global Frontiers and the Making of Modern China (Stanford University Press, 2023) traces the global history of the frontier in the twentieth century, with an emphasis on China.

Her first book, Empires of Coal: Fueling China’s Entry into the Modern World Order, 1860-1920 (Stanford University Press, Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, 2015), argues that the changes specific to the late Qing were part of global trends in the nineteenth century, when the rise of science and industrialization destabilized global systems and caused widespread unrest and the toppling of ruling regimes around the world.

Wu has received fellowships from the Institute of Advanced Studies in Princeton, the National Humanities Center, the Luce/ACLS Program in China Studies, Fulbright, and the Mellon Foundation. She has published articles in Nature, The American Historical Review, International History Review, and other leading journals in history, history of science, and Asian Studies.


Institutional Affiliation

Lehigh University


Session

06-27
15:30
90min
H1: History without Chronology and the histories of non-Western World
Shellen Wu, Emily Mokros, Stefan Tanaka, Carl Kubler, Paul Kramer, Vanderbilt University

Stefan Tanaka's book History without Chronology (Open Access: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11418981) emerged from his recognition that the writing of histories of non-Western places are handicapped, if not predetermined, by the linearity of history. HwC then argues that other understandings of time, history, and change are possible, indeed necessary if we are to achieve a respect for heterogeneity. This panel will explore the merits of the argument, its implications, and the possibilities for another understanding of history.

Shellen Wu, Lehigh University
Emily Mokros, University of Kentucky
Stefan Tanaka, University of California, San Diego
Carl Kubler, Carnegie Mellon University
Paul Kramer, Vanderbilt University

Medallion CD