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Thomas S. 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 received his Ph.D. in History in 2006 from Columbia University, and in the same year joined the faculty of Stanford University as Assistant Professor of Modern Chinese History. He is the author of Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China (University of California Press, forthcoming 2010, foreword by Benedict Anderson). This book charts the history of China’s 1954 Ethnic Classification project (minzu shibie), a joint social scientific-Communist state expedition wherein a group of ethnologists, linguists, and Party cadres traveled to the most ethnically diverse province in the People’s Republic to determine which minority communities would and would not be officially recognized by the state. He is also principal editor of Critical Han Studies: Understanding the Largest Ethnic Group on Earth, a pathbreaking volume that examines China’s majority ethnonational group. He is currently writing the first-ever global history of the Chinese typewriter, one of the most significant and misunderstood technological innovations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Research Interests

  • Modern China and Modern East Asia
  • Race and Ethnicity
  • Nation Formation and Modern Governmentality
  • STS/History of Science
  • Transnational and Comparative World History
  • Intellectual History
  • Linguistics

Current Research

  • Critical Han Studies: Understanding the Largest Ethnic Group on Earth (co-edited with James Leibold and Stephane Gros) (under contract at University of California Press)
  • The Chinese Typewriter: A Global History (book project in progress)

Publications

Books

  • Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China. Berkeley: University of California Press, Forthcoming 2010

Articles

  • "Seeing for the State: The Role of Social Scientists in China’s Ethnic Classification Project." (Asian Ethnicity, Volume 11, no. 3, October 2010 Forthcoming)
  • "Introducing Critical Han Studies," China Heritage Quarterly, September 30, 2009
  • “The Chinese Typewriter,”The China Beat, May 14, 2009
  • “The Final Rite of Passage.” In From Concept to Completion: A Dissertation-Writing Guide for History Students, edited by the American Historical Association Graduate and Early Career Committee. Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association, 2009
  • "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)

Courses Taught

  • History of Modern China
  • Mao Zedong: The Man Who Would Become China
  • Race and Ethnicity in East Asia
  • Communism and Revolution in China
  • Chinese Science, Technology, and Medicine
  • Major Topics in Modern Chinese History: The Qing-Republican Transition
  • Major Topics in Modern Chinese History: The Communist Revolution
  • Research Seminar in Modern Chinese History

Conference and Invited Papers (selected list)

  • "'Twenty Characters a Minute': The Discourse of the Chinese Typewriter and the Persistence of Orientalist Thought." (Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting 2010)
  • “The Typing Rebellion: Toward a Global History of the Chinese Typewriter” (History of Science Society, 2009 Annual Meeting, Phoenix, AZ)
  • “The Chinese Typewriter: The Global History of a Curious Invention and Those Who Misunderstood It.” (Beijing Institute of Graphic Communication, August 20, 2009)
  • “Categorizing Yunnan: The 1954 Ethnic Classification Project (minzu shibie).” (Fudan University, Shanghai, China, July 28, 2009)
  • “Meditations on the Han Figurine: How to Conceptualize, Research and Teach the Largest Ethnic Group on Earth.” (University of Washington, March 5, 2009)
  • “Han, Non-Han, and Non: Notions of Majority, Minority, and Miscellany in the Study of Southwestern China.” (Stanford University, Critical Han Studies Conference and Workshop, April 25-27, 2008)
  • “Ethnic Diversity in Contemporary China: Surface and Depth.” (Johns Hopkins University, March 28, 2008)
  • “Between Han Chauvinism and Local Nationalism: Ethnic Iconography in China.” (Stanford University, Center for East Asian Studies, February 21, 2008)
  • “The Other Origin of Species: Ethnic Categorization and Ethnic Identity in Contemporary China.” (University of Oregon, October 22, 2007)
  • “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)

Reviews

  • Ian R. Bartky. One Time Fits All: The Campaigns for Global Uniformity. (Science Magazine, February 2008)
  • 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 Awards

  • ACLS/Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation “New Perspectives on Chinese Culture and Society” Award, 2008
  • Stanford College Dean’s Office of Humanities and Sciences Award, 2008
  • 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
  • Columbia University Weatherhead Foundation Fellowship, 2000-2006