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thomas mullaney

Thomas S. Mullaney

Assistant Professor of History

E-mail: tsmullaney@stanford.edu

Full Contact Information

At Stanford Since 2006

Ph.D., Columbia University, Department of History, 2006; M.A., Columbia University, Department of History, 2004; M.A., Johns Hopkins University, Humanities Center, 2000; B.A., Johns Hopkins University, East Asian Studies/ International Studies, 1999

Bio Sketch

Thomas S. Mullaney joined the department in 2006 as Assistant Professor in Modern Chinese History after completing his Ph.D. at Columbia University. Mullaney’s research examines the complex historical and sociological processes that connect the production of modern social scientific knowledge to the production of modern state power. His research deals with the role of the social sciences in the history of state- and nation-formation, ethnic and racial identity, state and social scientific practices of individual and collective identification, classification theory, and transnational and comparative world history.

Research Interests

  • Modern East Asia
  • Race and Ethnicity
  • Categorization and Identity
  • Transnational and Comparative World History
  • Nation Formation and Modern Governmentality
  • History and Anthropology of Science

Publications

  • “The Chinese Typewriter”,The China Beat, May 14, 2009
  • Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification and Scientific Statecraft in Modern China, 1928-1954 Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 2006
  • "Ethnic Classification Writ Large: The 1954 Yunnan Province Ethnic Classification Project and its Foundations in Republican-Era Taxonomic Thought." (China Information, Volume 18, No. 2, July 2004). Visit here for complete article (requires subscription)
  • Editor's Introduction to the Special Issue on Ethnic Classification. (China Information, Volume 18, No. 2, July 2004). Visit here for complete article (requires subscription)
  • "Saidian Orientalism and East Asian Studies, or 'Can Orientalism Survive?'" The Columbia Historical Review. Volume 1 Spring 2001.

Conference Papers

  • “Henry Rodolph Davies: The Link Between Colonial India and the People’s Republic of China.” (Crossing Borders and Paradigms: Anthropology of Southwest China Reconsidered, Dali, Yunnan Province, August 7-15, 2007) [Co-Sponsored by Centre for Ethnological & Anthropological Theories and Methods at The Central University for Nationalities (Beijing) and School of Southwestern Minority Studies at The Southwestern University for Nationalities (Chengdu)]
  • “Han, Solo: Understanding the Ethnonational Divide in Communist China." (University of California Irvine, Rethinking Divides in the Study of China, April 28, 2007)
  • “Ten meditations on extinction.” (UCLA, Department of Information Studies, Design for Forgetting and Exclusion Workshop, April 13-15, 2007)
  • “‘I’m gonna make you love me’ Social engineering, disobedient science, and Chinese Communist state power.” (Stanford University, Center for East Asian Studies, November 27, 2006)
  • “Ariadne's Clue of Thread: Towards a Forensic Model of Existence.” (UCLA, Department of Information Studies, November 16, 2006)
  • "Coming to Terms with the Nation: Toward a History of Ethnic Classification in Twentieth-Century China." (Bard College, Bard in China Conference Series, April 14, 2005)
  • "Ethnic Classification in China and the Tensions Across Space, Time, and Metrics." (Columbia University Center for the Study of Ethnicity & Race Speaker Series, December 1, 2004)
  • “Taming Diversity in Seven Easy Steps: How Researchers in 1954 Categorized the Minorities of Yunnan Province (China) in Less Than Six Months." (Columbia University Department of History Graduate-Faculty Symposium, October 22, 2004)
  • "Ethnic Classification Writ Large: The 1954 Yunnan Province Ethnic Classification Project and its Foundations in Republican-Era Taxonomic Thought." (The Johns Hopkins University Comparative and World History Seminar, November 11, 2003)
  • "From 400 to 55 in Under 50 Years: Towards a History of China's Ethnic Identification Project (minzu shibie)" (Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting 2002)
  • "The Early Reform Era Press and the Creation of a Post-Mao Mission: Media, Memory, and the Case of the China Youth Daily, 1978-1982" (Memory and Media in and of Contemporary China, University of California, Berkeley, March 2-4, 2001)
  • "The Early Reform Era Press and the Creation of a Post-Mao Mission: Media, Memory, and the Case of the China Youth Daily, 1978-1982 " (Concordia University History in the Making Conference, 2001)
  • "Exile, Refuge, and the Chinese Discourse on Interior Minorities" (Columbia University Tenth Annual Graduate Student Conference on East Asia, 2000)

Reviews

  • Benjamin A. Elman, On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550-1900. (Eighteenth Century Studies, Volume 40, Number 3, Spring 2007)
  • Benjamin A. Elman. A Cultural History of Modern Science in China. (Science Magazine, January 2007)
  • Suisheng Zhao. A Nation-State by Construction: Dynamics of Modern Chinese Nationalism. (H-Nationalism, January 2007; reprinted H-Asia, March 2007)
  • David M. Lampton. Same Bed, Different Dreams: Managing U.S.-China relations, 1989-2000. (Stanford Magazine, March/April 2002)
  • Yung-chen Chiang, Social Engineering and the Social Sciences in China, 1919-1949. (China Information, Volume XVI, No. 1, 2002)
  • Henry Yuhuai He, Dictionary of the Political Thought of the People's Republic of China. (China Information, Volume XV, No. 2, 2001)
  • Harriet Evans and Stephanie Donald, ed., Picturing Power in the PRC: Posters of the Cultural Revolution. (China Information, Volume XV, No. 1, 2001)

Fellowships and Honors

  • Weatherhead Foundation Summer Fellowship,2004
  • Social Science Research Council International Pre- Dissertation Fellowship, 2002-2003
  • Blakemore Foundation Fellowship for Advanced Asian Language Studies, 2002-2003
  • Japan Foundation Japanese Language Training Program for Postgraduate Students
  • 2001 Weatherhead Foundation Fellowship, 2000-2006
  • Foreign Language Area Studies Grant, 2000