- yu35@uwm.edu
- Holton Hall
- https://xinyuhistory.com
- CV
Xin Yu
- Visiting Assistant Professor, History
Education
- PhD, History, Washington University in St. Louis
- MA, History, Washington University in St. Louis
- MA, Chinese History, East China Normal University
- BA, History, Central China Normal University
Courses Taught
HIST 175 East Asian Civilization to 1600
HIST 176 East Asian Civilization since 1600
HIST 376 Premodern China
HIST 377 Modern China
HIST 378 Contemporary China
HIST 402 Topics in Asian History: Family, Gender, and Sexuality in East Asia
Research Interests
- Early Modern and Modern China, East Asian history
- Kinship, family, gender, lineage, and genealogy
- Book history, print culture, and printing technology
- Rural society, everyday life, and local politics
His first book project, which is based on his doctoral dissertation “Publishing at the Grassroots: Print Culture and Rural Society in Early Modern China” (Washington University in St. Louis, 2022), traces the history of Chinese genealogies between 1450 and 1644. Genealogies were large compilations of family-related texts and images. They started to be popular around 1500 and became possibly the most widespread type of books in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He found that the proliferation of genealogies was both a product of and a catalyst for the development of lineage organizations (large-scale patrilineal organizations that performed multiple functions) in southern China. It was also a process in which book and print culture started to penetrate rural society, reaching both the literate and illiterate populations at the bottom of Chinese society.
He is also working on projects on a variety of topics, such as movable-type printing technology, the social practices and cultural meanings of adoption (jisi 继嗣) in late imperial China, and what he calls “outcasts of the family system”—family traitors, remarried wives, and bond-servants, who were ostracized from their families but had to live in the same community with stigma. At the center of all these projects is an interest in the relationship between everyday practice and knowledge production. For more information, see his personal website xinyuhistory.com.
Related Activities
- Junior Fellow, Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography
- Member of Undergraduate Committee, History Department, UWM
- Mentor, SURF (Support for Undergraduate Research Fellows) Program, UWM
- Mentor, UR@UWM (Summer Research for Incoming Students) Program, UWM