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Fan, Fa-ti

Associate Professor
Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1999
East Asia , History of Science, Environmental History, Nation and Empire


Click here for CV

Office: LT 817

 
Phone: (607) 777-2494
 E-mail: ffan@binghamton.edu

My research centers on the history of science, modern East Asia, nationalism, and imperialism. I am particularly interested in the issues of cultural encounter, knowledge translation, representations of nature, and inter/transnational cultural relations. I have published a book on British scientific encounters in Qing China and am currently working on two projects: one on the intersections of nature, nation, and empire in Republican China and the other on science and mass politics in Communist China.

At Binghamton, I have taught a range of courses in East Asian history, the history of science, environmental history, and comparative and world history. I am happy to work with both undergraduate and graduate students who wish to study in these areas.

I have served or am serving on the editorial boards of Isis, the official journal of the History of Science Society, East Asian Science, Technology and Society, Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences , and the book series, Science and Culture in the Nineteenth Century (Chatto & Pickering Publishers), among others. I am an Executive Board Member of the Fernand Braudel Center at Binghamton University and am currently Secretary of the International Society for the History of East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine.

Recent or current undergraduate courses:

  • Science and Technology in the Modern World
  • China in the Twentieth Century
  • World Environmental History
  • History of Imperialism
  • Landscape and the Historical Imagination

Recent or current graduate courses:

  • Science, Technology, and the National Imagination
  • Nationalisms in East Asia
  • Historiography
  • Environmental History
  • Nature and Empire

Recent Publications

Books:

  • British Naturalists in Qing China : Science, Empire, and Cultural Encounter ( Harvard University Press, 2004). Chinese Translation (Beijing: Remin chubanshe, scheduled to appear in 2008).

Journal Articles and Book Chapters:

  • “Redrawing the Map: Science in Twentieth-Century China,” Isis 98 (forthcoming in September 2007).
  • Science in Cultural Borderlands: Natural History, European Imperialism, and Cultural Encounter in Nineteenth-Century China,” East Asian Science, Technology, and Society: an International Journal (forthcoming).
  • “National Narrative and the Historiography of Chinese Science,” in 古今論衡 (Disquisitions on the Past and Present), (forthcoming).
  • “文化遭遇與科學實作：博物研究與英科學帝國主義在清代中國” (“Scientific Practice in Cultural Encounter: Natural History and British Scientific Imperialism in Qing China”), Ping-yi Chu, ed., 中國史新論：科技與中國社會 (Taipei: Academia Sinica, forthcoming).
  • "How Did the Chinese Become Native?: Science and the Search for National Origins in the May Fourth Era,” in Nation, Modernity, and the Restructuring of the Field of Cultural Production in China: Beyond the May Fourth Paradigm, Kai-wing Chow, et al., ed. (Lexington Books, forthcoming).
  • “Nature and Nation in Chinese Political Thought: the National Essence Circle in Early Twentieth-Century China,” The Moral Authority of Nature, Lorraine Daston and Fernando Vidal, ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 409-37.
  • “Science in a Chinese Entrepôt: British Naturalists and their Chinese Associates in Old Canton,” Osiris 18 (2003): 60-78.
  • “Science and Informal Empire: Victorian Naturalists in China ,” British Journal for the History of Science 36 (2003), 1-26.
  • “Hybrid Discourse and Textual Practice: Sinology and Natural History in the Nineteenth Century,” History of Science , 38 (2000): 25-56.

Review Essays and Commentaries :

  • Featured essay review on Benjamin Elman, On Their Own Terms: Science in China , 1550-1900 (Harvard University Press, 2005), Isis 97 (2006): 535-538.
  • "Author's Reply” for a review symposium on my book, British Naturalists in Qing China , in Metascience 14:2 (August 2005): 165-169.
  • “Science and Medicine, Asia and Europe,” Review essay in Metascience 11 (2002), 177-84.

Web Publications:

Recent Grants and Fellowships:

  • Visiting Scholar, Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, 2007.
  • Visiting Scholarship, Maison des Sciences de l'Homme and REHSEIS (CNRS and University of Paris VII), Paris, Summer 2005.
  • Smithsonian Institution Postdoctoral Fellowship, Spring 2005.
  • Mellon Fellowship, The Needham Research Institute, Fall 2003.
  • Dean's Research Semester Award, SUNY-Binghamton, Spring 2003.
  • Participant, Asian Studies Initiatives Grant, the Freeman Foundation, 2002-2005.
  • Individual Development Award, UUP/SUNY, 2001.
  • Postdoctoral Fellowship, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, 1999-2000.
  • Small Grant, The China and Inner Asia Council, Association for Asian Studies, 1998.
  • Dissertation Research Grant, National Science Foundation, 1996-97.
  • Grant for Research Abroad, University of Wisconsin-Madison , 1996.
  • Dissertation Fellowship, Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, 1995-1996.

Editorial and Other Professional Activities :

  • Associate Editorial Board, Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, 2007- .
  • Editorial Board, East Asia Science, Technology and Society: an International Journal, 2006 - .
  • Editorial Board, Review, Journal of the Fernand Braudel Center, 2006 - .
  • Editorial Board, book series Science and Culture in the Nineteenth Century, Pickering & Chatto Publishers, 2005 - .
  • Advisory Editorial Board, Isis: Journal of the History of Science Society, 2004-2006.
  • Editorial Board, Metascience, 2002-2004.
  • Secretary, International Society for the History of East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine, 2005 - .
  • Executive Board, Fernand Braudel Center, 2006 - .