Yamin Xu

Yamin Xu

Department Chair
Associate Professor

Reilly Hall 401
Le Moyne College
1419 Salt Springs Road
Syracuse, NY 13214


PHONE:

(315) 445-4253


EMAIL


Associate Professor of History
Chair, Department of History

I received my B.A. from Nankai University (China), M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from University of California at Berkeley. I had taught in several different universities in both California and Alabama before I joined the Le Moyne faculty here in 2003.  Besides World Civilization, I teach East Asian surveys from Neolithic origins to the present. My East Asian seminars are organized around the topics concerning modern East Asian societies, governments, cultures, intellectual traditions, religious practices, gender issues, and international relations. I have valuable firsthand experiences of living and working in China.  I receive all kinds of daily information about China in Chinese and keep a close contact with people there. This can help me to bridge the gap between the East and West while teaching in Le Moyne classroom. My research interests primarily focus on late imperial and modern China. I am currently working on a number of projects dealing with issues concerning Chinese state, society, and modernity from a perspective of the city of Beijing.

Courses
East Asia to 1600
East Asia since 1600
Modern East Asia Seminars on various topics
Women in China and Japan
World Civilizations I & II

Recent and Forthcoming Publications

  • Book manuscripts in preparation: Handling ‘Wicked People’ and Civil Strife in Beijing: Changes in Neighborhoods, Urban Space, and Police Institutions, 1640s-1930s.  Volume One: Under the Qing; Volume Two: Under the Republic.”
  • “Urban Communities, State, Spatial Order, and Modernity: Studies of Imperial and Republican Beijing in Perspective.”  Feature article, China Review International 15:1, Spring 2009.
  • “Policing Civility on the Streets: Encounter with Litterbugs, ‘Nightsoil Lords,’ and Street Corner Urinators in Republican Beijing.”  Twentieth-Century China 30:2 (April 2005): 28-71.
  • “Confucianism,” “Traditional Supervisory System,” “Imperial Hanlin Academy,” “Huang Zongxi,” “Gu Yanwu,” “Wang Fuzhi,” “Republican Five-Divisions System.”  Articles in Berkshire Encyclopedia of China, 2009.
  • “Review on Stephen Haw’s Beijing—A Concise History.”  China Review International 14:2, Fall 2008.
  • “Review on Hanchao Lu’s Street Criers: A Cultural History of Chinese Beggars.”  The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 37:2 (2006): 336-337.
  • “Review on Dragons, Tigers, and Dogs: Qing Crisis Management and the Boundaries of State Power in Late Imperial China.”  China Review International 10:2 (Fall 2003): 363-368.

Recent Presentations

  • “Central Asia, the Next Hot Place: Oil and Global Politics.”  Foreign Policy Association Great Decisions Discussion Group, Syracuse, October 2007.
  • “Neighborhood Management of Qing Beijing and Traditional Configuration of Social and Spatial Order.”  New England Conference of the Association for Asian Studies, Annual Meeting, November 2006.
  • “Domestic Order in Flux: Family Violence, Public Opinion and State in Republican Beijing.”  New England Conference of the Association for Asian Studies, Annual Meeting, November 2005.
  • “Reconfigured Neighborhoods and the Expansion of State Institutions: Social Structural Changes in Beijing and Their Implications, 1800s-1930s,” Association for Asian Studies, Annual Meeting, Chicago, April 2005.
  • “Structural Changes of Beijing Neighborhoods and Social and Political Implications, 1800s-1930s.” New England Conference of the Association for Asian Studies, Dartmouth College, November 2004.
  • “Crimes against Civility in Public Space: Litterbugs, Street-Corner Urinators, and Misdemeanors in Republican Beijing.”  Association for Asian Studies, Annual Meeting, San Diego, March 2004.

Organizer and co-organizer for panels

  • “In Search of New Agents of Mediation and Control in Changing Local Societies: Late-Qing and Early Republican China in Transition,” Annual Meeting, Association for Asian Studies, Chicago, March 31-April 3, 2005.
  • “Wicked People and the Chinese State: Common Transgressions and Political Control from Qing to Republic,” Annual Meeting, Association for Asian Studies, Chicago, April 2002

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