Works by Faculty

Following his Zhou Enlai biography published earlier this year, Distinguished Global Network Professor of History Chen Jian joins forces with the Elihu Professor of History and Global Affairs at Yale University Odd Arne Westad for a book on China’s dramatic transformation in the “long 1970s” as it moved from political upheaval to unprecedented economic growth and social changes. The two offer a compelling portrayal of the country's efforts and progress, while exploring the nation's gradual and steady embrace of the outside world. They focus on the shifting power dynamics and political agenda of the leadership, and the contributions of various figures – from China’s own everyday people to overseas Chinese entrepreneurs and American engineers, from Japanese scholars to German designers, etc. It is a story of revolutionary transformation that neither the Chinese people nor foreign observers had expected.

About the authors

Chen Jian is the Director of the NYU Shanghai-ECNU Center on Global History, Economy, and Culture, a Distinguished Global Network Professor of History at NYU Shanghai, and a Global Network Professor in the Department of History at NYU. He is also Zijiang Distinguished Visiting Professor at East China Normal University. Prior to joining NYU Shanghai, he was the Michael J. Zak Professor of History for US-China Relations at Cornell University, Global Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Center, the Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs at the London School of Economics, and visiting research professor at the University of Hong Kong (2009-2013). He holds a PhD from Southern Illinois University and an MA from Fudan University and East China Normal University in Shanghai.

Odd Arne Westad is the Elihu Professor of History and Global Affairs at Yale University. His books include The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times, winner of the Bancroft Prize, and Restless Empire: China and the World since 1750. 

First published in 1999, NYU Shanghai Provost Joanna Waley-Cohen’s book has a newly translated Chinese edition. A historian specializing in early modern Chinese history, Waley-Cohen provides an insightful examination of China’s interactions with the rest of the world, spanning from the Silk Road to the present day. She argues that long before Europeans arrived in East Asia, China was already intricately connected to a vast network of commercial, intellectual, religious, and cultural exchanges. Waley-Cohen portrays China as an open and cosmopolitan country, actively participating in exchanges with other cultures and societies.

About the author

Joanna Waley-Cohen is the Provost for NYU Shanghai and Julius Silver Professor of History at New York University, where she has taught Chinese history since 1992. As Provost, she serves as NYU Shanghai’s chief academic officer, setting the university’s academic strategy and priorities, and overseeing academic appointments, research, and faculty affairs. Her books include The Culture of War in China: Empire and the Military under the Qing Dynasty (I.B. Tauris, 2006), The Sextants of Beijing: Global Currents in Chinese History (W.W. Norton, 1999), and Exile in Mid-Qing China: Banishment to Xinjiang, 1758-1820 (Yale University Press, 1991). 

Originally published in English in 2022, this must-read gets a Chinese edition. Drawing on eight years of fieldwork, Assistant Professor of Sociology Yi-Lin Chiang provides a unique perspective on how Chinese youth from socially advantaged backgrounds prepare to be globally competitive. Chiang explores how high-achieving Chinese high schoolers aspire to become “study gods” (xueshen) – students who excel academically not just through sheer hard work, but by mastering the unwritten rules of status and success. Chiang discovers how these youth use their  understanding of societal hierarchy to adjust their behavior, aligning with valued traits while avoiding those that could lower their standing. She observes them as they transition to university life and their careers, relying on their resourceful parents and external help to overcome obstacles and navigate professional relationships, while expecting preferential treatment. Study Gods highlights how this new generation is emerging as a powerful force in the global arena. 

About the author

Yi-Lin Chiang is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at NYU Shanghai. Before joining NYU Shanghai, she was Associate Professor of Sociology at National Chengchi University in Taiwan. Chiang’s research focuses on educational stratification and intergenerational status transmission in greater China. Her ethnographic work examines the processes and outcomes of elite status transmission. In other lines of research, she uses Taiwanese panel data to explore how schools and families contribute to educational inequality. Her book, Study Gods (Princeton University Press), received the Pierre Bourdieu Award for the Best Book in Sociology of Education from the Sociology of Education section of the American Sociological Association.

This 1996 Business Week bestseller by Director for the Program on Creativity + Innovation Adam Brandenburger and Milton Steinbach Professor at the Yale School of Management Barry Nalebuff gets an updated Chinese language edition. Co-opetition offers a theory of value in business. It argues that to create value, people need to act cooperatively. At the same time, in claiming value, there is an inherently competitive element. These two processes are brought together in this book via the notion of “co-opetition” — a fundamental duality at the heart of business.

About the author

Adam Brandenburger is the Director of the Program on Creativity and Innovation, as well as the Area Head of Economics and Global Network Professor at NYU Shanghai. Additionally, he holds the title of J.P. Valles Professor of Business Economics and Strategy at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at NYU, and is a Distinguished Professor at the Tandon School of Engineering at NYU. He was a professor at Harvard Business School from 1987 to 2002.  He received his B.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Cambridge.  Adam researches in the areas of game theory, information theory, and cognitive science.

While Confucius is widely recognized as a philosopher and a wise teacher, Associate Professor of Global China Studies Zhao Lu’s new book examines lesser-known unconventional portrayals of him as a prophet, demon hunter, villain in 19th-century American media, and symbol of feudal oppression during the Cultural Revolution. Zhao looks at how these alternative depictions challenge the established images of Confucius, showing how they reflect the specific anxieties of different groups. His work reveals not only the diverse ways Confucius has been perceived, but also how his image has been used to address fears, legitimize power, reinforce stereotypes, and shape historical narratives.

About the author

Zhao Lu is an Associate Professor of Global China Studies at NYU Shanghai and a Global Network Associate Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Science at NYU. He earned his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied Chinese intellectual and cultural history. Before joining NYU Shanghai, he was a Research Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (2017–2018) and a research fellow at the International Consortium for Research in the Humanities (IKGF), at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (2013–2017). 
 

NYU Shanghai Chancellor Emeritus Yu Lizhong has published yet another book. By recounting the University’s establishment and how it has grown into a full-fledged global research university in the past 10 years, the founding chancellor, a lifetime educator, also reflects on cultivating youth, higher education reform, and bridging cultural differences through education.

About the author

Yu Lizhong was the founding chancellor of NYU Shanghai. From the 2011 ground-breaking ceremony to the inauguration of the Century Avenue Academic Building in 2014, from receiving freshmen on move-in day to NYU Shanghai's first virtual commencement three days ago, Chancellor Yu has been there every step of the way. After steppping down, he is the Chancellor Emeritus of the University and is the author of See the World through Education. 

Chen Jian, Distinguished Global Network Professor of History, authors a new book, Zhou Enlai: A Life. This is the first comprehensive biography of Zhou in English written with the support of multi-lingual, multi-archival, and multi-source research. It portrays Zhou as a devoted Communist revolutionary, an influential politician and statesman, an accomplished diplomatic giant and, in the final analysis, a human being. It also brings to light Zhou’s visions and aspirations, political acumen, and enormous administrative and executive capacity. More broadly, the Zhou story told by Chen epitomizes China’s tortuous path toward modernity, while helping the reader understand how China becomes the nation it is today.

About the author

Chen Jian is the Director of the NYU Shanghai-ECNU Center on Global History, Economy, and Culture, a Distinguished Global Network Professor of History at NYU Shanghai, and a Global Network Professor in the Department of History at NYU. He is also Zijiang Distinguished Visiting Professor at East China Normal University. Prior to joining NYU Shanghai, he was the Michael J. Zak Professor of History for US-China Relations at Cornell University, Global Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Center, the Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs at the London School of Economics, and visiting research professor at the University of Hong Kong (2009-2013). He holds a PhD from Southern Illinois University and an MA from Fudan University and East China Normal University in Shanghai.

In her latest book, Professor Greenspan reimagines the relationship between China and ubiquitous wireless technology by synthesizing contemporary media theory with modern Chinese thought on three critical historical figures including Tan Sitong, Xiong Shili, and Mou Zongsan. The book takes a fresh look at the key issues around technological evolution in a shifting geopolitical landscape, offers an alternative to certain myopias of Western media theory, and presents a deep, historical engagement with issues and debates surrounding Chinese cyberculture.

About the author

Anna Greenspan is an Associate Professor of Contemporary Global Media at NYU Shanghai and a Global Network Associate Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at NYU. She is also a Co-Director of NYU Shanghai's Center of AI and Culture. Her research focuses on urban futures and emerging media. Anna holds a PhD in Continental Philosophy from Warwick University, UK.

ISBN: ISBN-10: 1399519735; ISBN-13: 978-1399519731

Co-edited by Associate Professor of Contemporary Global Media Anna Greenspan and Assistant Professor of Interactive Media Arts (IMA) Bogna Konior, who lead NYU Shanghai’s Center for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Culture, along with former Visiting Professor Benjamin Bratton, this new volume tracks the history of Chinese AI and reexamines China’s engagement with AI by moving beyond the clichés that dominate contemporary debate. Contributing experts from across various fields draw on a mixture of speculative thought experiments and cutting-edge use cases to offer views on topics including AI and Chinese philosophy, AI ethics and policy-making, the development of computational models in early Chinese cybernetics, and the aesthetics of Sinofuturism. It provides a fresh perspective on what AI is today in China, and what it might become.

About the authors

Anna Greenspan is an Associate Professor of Contemporary Global Media at NYU Shanghai and a Global Network Associate Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at NYU. She is also a Co-Director of NYU Shanghai's Center of AI and Culture. Her research focuses on urban futures and emerging media. Anna holds a PhD in Continental Philosophy from Warwick University, UK.

Bogna Konior is an Assistant Professor of Interactive Media Arts (IMA) at NYU Shanghai. She is also a Research Fellow in the Antikythera Program on Speculative Computation at the Berggruen Institute, and a mentor in the Synthetic Intelligence program at Medialab-Matadero Madrid.

In this first English translation of Chinese scholar Cai Tinglan’s 1830s saga at sea (as known as Hainan Zazhu in Chinese), Cai documents his encounters with the daily life, culture, religious practices, and government affairs of the early Nguyễn dynasty of Vietnam. Assistant Professor of Global China Studies Zhao Lu and historian Kathlene Baldanza have made Cai’s adventures accessible to English-speakers for the first time, while providing a comprehensive introduction which explains the social, political, and economic context of his travels, along with extensive annotation and a glossary of terms.

About the author

Zhao Lu is an Associate Professor of Global China Studies at NYU Shanghai and a Global Network Associate Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Science at NYU. He earned his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied Chinese intellectual and cultural history. Before joining NYU Shanghai, he was a Research Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (2017–2018) and a research fellow at the International Consortium for Research in the Humanities (IKGF), at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (2013–2017). 

This new volume tackles current interpretative problems in the study of the opening of Japan to the Western world in the 19th century by looking beyond existing methods and theories to rethink the country and its global connections through new organizing frameworks. Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow for Global Perspectives on Society (GPS) Warren A. Stanislaus’ chapter, “Laughing at Civilisation: Charles Wirgman’s Japan Punch and the Reopening of Great Britain,” reveals the unlikely story of a popular treaty port humor magazine, which diverged from a civilizing mission to playfully reimagine the opening of Japan and satirize Western notions of progress.

About the author

Warren A. Stanislaus is a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow for Global Perspectives on Society (GPS) at NYU Shanghai. He received his DPhil (PhD) in history from the University of Oxford (Pembroke College). Warren is interested in how global cultural flows across national borders shape emotions, identities and popular culture. In particular, employing transnational approaches to modern and contemporary society, his work explores forces of globalization from below. Focusing on media and the politics of popular culture, Warren specializes in research that examines Japan’s transnational connectivity with East Asia and the wider world.

The rapid development of quantum technologies has driven a revolution in related research areas such as quantum computation and communication, and quantum materials. The first prototypes of functional quantum devices are beginning to appear, frequently created using ensembles of atoms, which allow the observation of sensitive, quantum effects, and have important applications in quantum simulation and matter wave interferometry. This modern text offers a self-contained introduction to the fundamentals of quantum atom optics and atomic many-body matter wave systems. Assuming a familiarity with undergraduate quantum mechanics, this book will be accessible for graduate students and early career researchers moving into this important new field. A detailed description of the underlying theory of quantum atom optics is given, before development of the key, quantum, technological applications, such as atom interferometry, quantum simulation, quantum metrology, and quantum computing.

About the Author:

Tim Byrnes is an Assistant Professor of Physics at NYU Shanghai. He is also a Visiting Assistant Professor at the National Institute of Informatics in Tokyo, Japan. He holds a PhD from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Professor Byrnes' research interests are in quantum information technologies, condensed matter physics, and AMO (atomic, molecular, optical) physics. Specifically, he is interested in various applications of Bose-Einstein condensates to quantum information. He is also interested in the interface of physics and biology and emergent phenomena.

Ebubechukwu O. Ilo-Okeke is a Postdoctoral Fellow at NYU Shanghai.

Militarizing Outer Space: Astroculture, Dystopia, and the Cold War explores the dystopian and destructive dimensions of the Space Age and challenges conventional narratives of a bipolar Cold War rivalry. Concentrating on weapons, warfare and violence, this provocative volume examines real and imagined endeavors of arming the skies and conquering the heavens. The third and final volume in the groundbreaking European Astroculture trilogy, Militarizing Outer Space zooms in on the interplay between security, technopolitics and knowledge from the 1920s through the 1980s. Often hailed as the site of heavenly utopias and otherworldly salvation, outer space transformed from a promised sanctuary to a present threat, where the battles of the future were to be waged. Astroculture proved instrumental in fathoming forms and functions of warfare’s futures past, both on earth and in space. The allure of dominating outer space, the book shows, was neither limited to the early twenty-first century nor to current American space force rhetorics.

About the Author:

Alexander Geppert is Associate Professor of History and European Studies at New York University. He holds a joint appointment at NYU Shanghai and the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies in New York City. Born and raised in Germany, he has four history degrees, including a PhD from the European University Institute in Florence. From 2010 to 2016 he directed the Emmy Noether research group ‘The Future in the Stars: European Astroculture and Extraterrestrial Life in the Twentieth Century’ at Freie Universität Berlin.

In his latest book, Chancellor Tong Shijun argues that “learning to become (one’s true self)” is the fundamental purpose of education. In a series of speeches and essays, he reflects on the philosophy and governance structure of Chinese universities, analyzes the educational development of China and its major challenges, and considers the spiritual traditions of Chinese academia and lessons gained over the years. “When I first started writing this book, I intended to use my expertise in philosophy to gain a better understanding of universities and education,” Tong says. “When the book was finished, I realized that my experience as a professor and university leader had also shaped my philosophy study in an interesting way.”

About the Author: 

Tong Shijun became the second Chancellor of NYU Shanghai on June 1, 2020. A scholar of Western and Chinese philosophy, he served as an administrator and professor of philosophy at East China Normal University for more than 20 years. 

Perception refers to the process of people organizing, identifying, and interpreting sensory information to understand the presented information or environment, such as distinguishing between different odors or discriminating between different shades of colors. Practice or training in perceptual tasks improves the quality of perceptual performance, often by a substantial amount. This improvement is called “perceptual learning” and has become an active area of research of both theoretical and practical significance. Dosher and Lu’s book provides a comprehensive and integrated treatment of the phenomena and theories of perceptual learning, focusing on the visual domain, for active perceptual learning researchers, and to describe and develop the basic techniques and principles for readers who want to successfully incorporate perceptual learning into applied developments. 

“Barbara and I started doing research in perceptual learning in 1997. The field has transformed since then, and this book tells the story of what we came to know about both the phenomena and the theories,” Lu says. “The publication of this book is a major milestone in our more than 20 years of collaboration. It is also the beginning of many new, exciting joint research projects. I really appreciate Barbara’s friendship and the opportunity to work with her. ”

About the Author:

Zhong-Lin Lu is NYU Shanghai’s Chief Scientist and Associate Provost for Sciences. He also leads the NYU-ECNU Institute of Brain and Cognitive Science at NYU Shanghai. As Chief Scientist, he sets NYU Shanghai’s strategic vision for fostering scientific research and transforming into a world-class research university.