Daniel Barish

Areas of Specialization

Late Imperial China, Modern China, Modern Japan

Education

Ph.D., Princeton University
M.A., Columbia University
B.A., Emory University, summa cum laude

Academic Interests & Research Narrative

My research focuses on the cultural, political, and intellectual world of the nineteenth century and the transition from empire to nation in China.

My first book, Learning to Rule: Court Education and the Remaking of the Qing State, 1861-1912, was recently published by Columbia University Press. The book, which was also selected as a study of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, explores debates surrounding the education of the final three Qing emperors as imperial curricula became proxy battles for divergent visions of how to best re-stabilize the country after years of domestic rebellion and imperialist aggression.

I am currently in early stages of research for two new projects:

The first, Empire’s Last Servants: The 1904 Class of Civil Examination Candidates and Networks of Knowledge in Modern China, examines the social production of knowledge across the 1911 revolutionary divide in China. The project seeks to understand not just the transformation of an elite group of exam candidates, but also the ways in which they and others worked to translate their knowledge to the new mass audience of citizen consumers in the late Qing and early Republic.

The second project, The Imperial Politics of Life and Death in Modern China, explores changes to a variety of life-cycle rituals of the Qing imperial family over the course of the nineteenth century. As the Qing transitioned from a multi-ethnic empire to a constitutional monarchy and sovereign member of the global community, the book seeks to uncover the changing meaning of imperial rituals and their relationship with elements of social, economic, and political life in the capital.

Selected Publications

Learning to Rule: Court Education and the Remaking of the Qing State, 1861-1912 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2022).

“The World’s Chinese Students’ Journal and American-influenced Education Reforms on the Eve of Revolution in China, 1905–1911,” in Jeff Kyong-McClain and Joseph Tse-Hei Lee, eds., From Missionary Education to Confucius Institutes: Historical Reflections on Sino-American Educational Exchange (New York: Routledge, 2023), 13-30

“Han Chinese, Manchu, and Western Spaces: The Changing Facade of Imperial Education in Qing Beijing,” Frontiers of History in China, Volume  14, Issue 2 (July 2019): 212-242.

“Empress Dowager Cixi’s Imperial Pedagogy: The School for Female Nobles and New Visions of  Authority in Early Twentieth Century China,” Nan Nu: Men, Women, and Gender in China, Volume 20, Issue 2 (January 2018): 256-284.

Selected Activities

• National Humanities Center Teacher Advisory Council, 2024-2025
• Editorial Board Member, Asia Pacific Perspectives, 2022-
• College Board Advanced Placement (AP®) World History: Modern Development Committee, 2023-2024

Selected Fellowships and Grants

• Baylor University College of Arts & Sciences Teaching Innovation Award, Summer 2024
• Association of Asian Studies-Gale Non-Residential Fellowship, 2023
• Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society, Summer Teaching Fellowship, 2022
• Baylor University College of Arts and Sciences Summer Sabbatical, 2021
• University of Michigan Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan Asia Library, Research Grant, 2020
• Stanford University Center for East Asian Studies/U.S. Department of Education International and Foreign Language Education Office, Research Grant, 2019-2020
• University of Chicago Center for East Asian Studies, Research Grant, 2019
• Baylor University College of Arts and Sciences Summer Sabbatical, 2018
• Fulbright IIE Dissertation Research Fellowship, 2014-2015

Regular Course Offerings

• Undergraduate:
  • HIS 1307 | World History Since 1500
  • HIS/AST 3305 | Traditional China
  • HIS/AST 3307 | History of Japan
  • HIS 3306 | Women and Gender in Chinese History
  • HIS/AST 4305 | Modern China
• Graduate:
  • HIS 5393 | Major Issues in Modern Chinese History

Other Courses Taught

• Undergraduate:
  • HIS 2385 | Introduction to East Asia
  • CHI 3V70 | Readings in Chinese
  • HON 3101 | Advanced Readings and Research
  • HIS 4358 | Seminar in Global History, The Late Qing
  • HIS 4358 | Seminar in Global History, Early China
  • HIS 4348 | Seminar in Global History, Asia Beyond Orientalism
• Graduate:
  • HIS 5390: Graduate Archive, Grant Writing, and Dissertation Launch Seminar

Work with Students

I am eager to work with students at all levels to help develop their research and teaching interests related to East Asia.