4th Annual Connie Chin Memorial Prize for Writing in East Asian Studies Awarded
Sijia Li (PhD student, East Asian Languages and Cultures) was awarded the 4th annual Connie Chin Memorial Writing in East Asian Studies, for her paper "Natural Knowledge, Global Trade, and Translation: Mapping Asbestos Textiles in Eighteenth-Century Japan."
"Sijia’s study of the rediscovery of asbestos in eighteenth-century Japan is one of the most well-researched and compelling histories I have seen,” says Paula Findlen, Ubaldo Pierotti Professor of History. “I had encouraged Sijia to think about asbestos as emblematic of how ambitious eighteenth-century Japanese scholars positioned themselves, their world, and the knowledge it contained at a juncture between earlier genealogies of knowledge and things that tied Japan closely to China and new ways of thinking about the nature of knowledge—indeed the knowledge of nature as Federico Marcon would say—in the era of Rangaku learning and the emergence of new genres of Japanese world maps that indicated a new kind of global consciousness. This essay was creatively researched and beautifully presented by [Sijia]. Sijia’s ability to work across a wide range of different sources in multiple languages, her ability to combine the kind of close textual reading that comes from her training in literature with history of cartography and geography, history of science, and cultural history, is truly impressive.”
In Li's own words: “As a graduate student specializing in early medieval Chinese literature and beginning to explore transcultural historical studies, I found it fascinating to unravel how the eighteenth-century Japanese naturalist Hiraga Gennai associated his invention of asbestos products with the legendary material, fire-proof cloth, by referencing, challenging, and rewriting the discourses of my beloved third-century Chinese writers. As I demonstrated in my essay, Gennai was not alone in his pursuits to renovate natural knowledge. Some of his contemporaries struggled to create asbestos forgeries, while others traced the origin of the material to the African continent. These discussions about fire-proof cloth serve as a prism through which both the anxiety and anticipation of Japanese intellectuals were refracted—an intellectual legacy requiring revision, and a broader early modern world in which their positions needed recalibration.”
Sponsored by the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and the Center for East Asian Studies, the Connie Chin Memorial Writing Prize in East Asian Studies recognizes and rewards outstanding examples of writing in an essay, term paper, or thesis produced during the current academic year, in any area of East Asian Studies, broadly defined. It is dedicated to beloved colleague Connie Chin (1946-2020), who enjoyed a 44-year career at Stanford beginning in 1976, moving several times between the Center of East Asian Studies and Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, where she spent her last 13 years as Department Manager.
Past Recipients:
3rd Annual Prize (2023)