Shoufu Yin is a historian of medieval and early modern China with a focus on the transformations between these two periods and interactions between China and Inner Asia in global historical contexts. He is broadly interested in political, institutional, intellectual, and literary cultures, especially in areas where they intersect. Overall, his scholarly passion lies in writing new kinds of global intellectual histories that foreground the theoretical contributions of historically marginalized thinkers from different traditions.

His courses explore innovative ways of learning history and humanities, featuring the agency of various previously underrepresented groups, while inviting us to do history with the things surrounding us, including objects and events, animals and plants, video games and TV dramas. In his research, he engages a wide array of sources in different languages—literary Sinitic (classical Chinese), Japanese, Korean, Manchu, Mongolian, Persian, Latin, and Greek, to name a few—and experiments with new methods and digital tools. His recent articles have appeared (or are forthcoming) in the Journal of the History of Ideas, History of Political Thought, Journal of Asian Studies, T’oung Pao, Journal of Chinese History, Korean Studies, and other places.

He is currently finalizing two book manuscripts: (1) Making Possibilities Possible: The “Chinese” Rhetorical Curriculum and a Transcultural History of Political Thought, ca. 1100–1600; (2) 1156 CE, China’s Referendum. Simultaneously, he has been working on a third monograph-length project, tentatively titled “Translingual Historiography: The Manchu ‘Ming History’ and Intellectual Revolutions of the Seventeenth-century Eurasia.”

He co-edits Between the People and the State: Chinese Statecraft from Early Ming to Xi Jinping, a forthcoming volume, and “Agency, Democracy, and China: The Political Philosophy of Jiwei Ci,” a special issue with Comparative Political Theory.

• China and Inner Asia in global historical contexts

• The 10th to 17th centuries

• Political, institutional, intellectual, and literary cultures

• Manuscriptology, diplomatics, and digital humanities

• Global intellectual history, comparative political theory, world philology/philosophy

Journal Articles

• Published/Forthcoming

“How Should the Dragon King Memorialize the Jade Emperor? Margins of Political Thought in Late Ming China.” Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture. Accepted and forthcoming.

“Speaking on behalf of the ‘Korean’ King: Rhetorical Education and Political Representation in Early Modern China.” The Journal of Asian Studies. Accepted and forthcoming.

“Visualizing Divergence: Rhetorical Education, Literary Culture, and Historical Imagination in China and Korea (ca. 1314–1644).” Korean Studies. Accepted and forthcoming.

“Liu Bei, Plato, et al. on Kingship: A Microhistory of Seventeenth-century Globalization and Political Thought.” History of Political Thought. Accepted and forthcoming.

“The Early Qing Compilation of the Ming History in Manchu: The Contexts, Contents, and Significance of the Ming gurun i suduri.” T’oung Pao: International Journal of Chinese Studies. Accepted and forthcoming.

“Election in Barbarian Lands: Representing Inner Asian and Euro-American Political Cultures in Early Modern China.” Oriens Extremus: Kultur, Geschichte, Reflexion in Ostasien 59 (2022): 157–185. [Final proof]

“Redefining Reciprocity: Appointment Edict and Political Thought in Medieval China.” Journal of the History of Ideas 83.4 (2022): 533-554.

“Rewarding Female Commanders in Medieval China: Official Documents, Rhetorical Strategies, and Gender Order.” Journal of Chinese History 6.1 (2022): 1-20. An earlier version of my manuscript, entitled “On the Pseudo-Recognition of Female Commanders in Medieval China: War, Gender, and Imperial Rhetoric” is publicized via SSRN.

“On the Importance of Having Atrocious Dreams: Social and Cultural Transformations of Tenth-Century China and Beyond” (in Chinese). Zaoqi zhongguoshi yanjiu 早期中國史研究 (Early and Medieval Chinese History) 12 (2020): 151-202.

• Under Review/In Circulation

“Toward a Minimalist Approach to Democracy: Ideas Excavated from the First Large-scale Referendum in World History.” Under review/publicized via Social Science Research Network (SSRN). [SSRN version]

“The Classic of Poems Is Mostly Composed by Women: Toward a Genealogy of a Claim in Early Modern China.” Manuscript submitted.

Book chapters

“The Dragon King’s Memorial: Official Documents, Vernacular Novel, and Prolegomena to a Future History of Chinese Political Thought” (in Chinese). Forthcoming in a two-volume Festschrift for Timothy Brook.

“Global History as an Approach to Political Theory: The Case of Jurchen Statecraft in the Mongol, Manchu, Russian, and Belgian Empires.” Forthcoming in Between the People and the State: Chinese Statecraft from Early Ming to Xi Jinping.

[with Michael Nylan] “Majority Rule in Imperial China.” The Cambridge History of Democracy, Volume 1: From Democratic Beginnings to c.1350. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.

[with Michael Nylan] “On Wen and Wu: Reading the Sunzi in Historical Context.” In Norton Critical Edition of The Art of War, edited by Michael Nylan. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2022.

Book reviews

“Review: Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China: Contestation of Humaneness, Justice, and Personal Freedom, by Tao Jiang.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 30.6 (2022): 1146-1149. [publisher’s version]

“Review of Nicolas Tackett, The Destruction of the Medieval Chinese Aristocracy.” Frontiers of History in China 9 (2014): 640–643. An expanded version in Chinese is published in Tang Song lishi pinglun 唐宋歷史評論 (The Tang and Song History Review) 1 (2015): 276–295. [publisher’s version]