Yunxiao Xiao

Yunxiao Xiao (Ch. 肖芸曉) studies the history of the book, of reading, and of information in ancient China with a specialty in late pre-imperial and early imperial paleographic texts. As her research passion lies in the epistemological practices and information technologies before the age of paper, she explores the intricate interplays between knowledge, ancient media, and people. Her dissertation and first monograph project, “The Crafts of the Hidden Hands: Scribal Culture and the Making of Texts in Early China,” concerns the common people and the actual practices behind the edifice of Sinitic classical knowledge and how the earliest written culture in East Asia emerged and evolved. Examining a series of major archaeological discoveries of ancient manuscripts from ca. 400 BCE to 300 CE as both cultural documents and material objects, she has forayed into the methods and practices of the people of ancient China and how they created, transmitted, updated, and reinvented literary and legal knowledge using bamboo, wood, and silk, elucidating the omnipresent authorial voice and editorial power of the myriad anonymous scribes. Building on her enduring interest in the history of media, information, and technology, her second, ongoing project explores how administrative data and scholarly information were represented, organized, controlled, and manipulated via bamboo and wood during the Qin-Han empire, aiming to unpack the social-historical significations and cultural-political implications of the transformation of media from bamboo/wood to paper.

Xiao has published multiple peer-reviewed articles in Chinese and English journals and has been selected as a Junior Fellow of the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at the Rare Book School.