Leo Shin

Associate Professor

Chinese History (with the Department of History)

Buchanan Tower 1223

Tuesday, Thursday 9:30 - 10:30

604-822-5167

lkshin@mail.ubc.ca

Leo Shin, Ph.D.

I am a cultural historian of China. I am interested in how the ideas of “China” and “Chineseness” have evolved over time, and I am intrigued by how the sociology of culture—the production, transmission, and consumption of beliefs and practices—has shaped not only how the boundaries of China have been drawn but also how China itself has been historicized. While my research has been centered on the later imperial period, I have maintained a strong interest in the more recent past, especially as it pertains to the formation and transformation of identities in what might be broadly referred to as the Sinophone world.

In this well-crafted 2006 study of the relationships between the state and its borderlands, Leo Shin traces the roots of China's modern ethnic configurations to the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). Challenging the traditional view that China's expansion was primarily an exercise of incorporation and assimilation, Shin argues that as the centre extended its reach to the wild and inaccessible south, the political interests of the state, the economic needs of the settlers, and the imaginations of the cultural elites all facilitated the demarcation and categorisation of these borderland 'non-Chinese' populations. The story told here, however, extends beyond the imperial period. Just as Ming emperors considered it essential to reinforce a sense of universal order by demarcating the 'non-Chinese', modern-day Chinese rulers also find it critical to maintain the myth of a unified multi-national state by officially recognising a total of fifty-six 'nationalities'.