Kenneth J. Hammond is Associate Professor of History and Head of the History Department at New Mexico State University. He received his B.A. from Kent State University and received his graduate degrees from Harvard, earning his A.M. in East Asian Regional Studies and his Ph.D. in History and East Asian Languages.

Dr. Hammond has received numerous grants and fellowships, including a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies to work with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, and an Affiliated Fellowship at the International Institute for Asian Studies at Leiden, the Netherlands. Professor Hammond is past president of the Society for Ming Studies and has served on the Board of Directors of the Southwest Association for Asian Studies.

Dr. Hammond's research focuses on the cultural and intellectual history of China in the late imperial era from the 10th through the 18th centuries, and especially the history of the Ming dynasty. He has published articles and translations on a wide range of subjects, including Chinese gardens, and is the editor of The Human Tradition in Premodern China, a biographical reader for undergraduate students.

Course Lecture Titles

1. Geography and Archaeology

2. The First Dynasties

3. The Zhou Conquest

4. Fragmentation and Social Change

5. Confucianism and Daoism

6. The Hundred Schools

7. The Early Han Dynasty

8. Later Han and the Three Kingdoms

9. Buddhism

10. Northern and Southern Dynasties

11. Sui Reunification and the Rise of the Tang

12. The Early Tang Dynasty

13. Han Yu and the Late Tang

14. Five Dynasties and the Song Founding

15. Intellectual Ferment in the 11th Century

16. Art and the Way

17. Conquest States in the North

18. Economy and Society in Southern Song

19. Zhu Xi and Neo-Confucianism

20. The Rise of the Mongols

21. The Yuan Dynasty

22. The Rise of the Ming

23. The Ming Golden Age

24. Gridlock and Crisis

25. The Rise of the Manchus

26. Kangxi to Qianlong

27. The Coming of the West

28. Threats from Within and Without

29. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom

30. Efforts at Reform

31. The Fall of the Empire

32. The New Culture Movement and May 4th

33. The Chinese Communists, 1921–1937

34. War and Revolution

35. China Under Mao

36. China and the World in a New Century