Rate My Professor Cynthia Brokaw

Brokaw's research centers on late imperial Chinese history (ca. 1400–1900), particularly print culture, commercial woodblock publishing, book trade networks, and the dissemination of texts to non-elites in the late Ming and Qing dynasties. Her major monographs are The Ledgers of Merit and Demerit: Social Change and Moral Order in Late Imperial China (Princeton University Press, 1991) and Commerce in Culture: The Sibao Book Trade in the Qing and Republican Periods (Harvard University Asia Center, 2007), the latter drawing on extensive field and archival work in southeastern China. She has co-edited Printing and Book Culture in Late Imperial China (University of California Press, 2005) with Kai-wing Chow, From Woodblocks to the Internet: Chinese Publishing and Print Culture in Transition, circa 1800 to 2008 (Brill, 2010) with Christopher Reed, The History of the Book in East Asia (Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2013) with Peter Kornicki, and Publishing for Daily Life in Early Modern East Asia (Lingua Franca 6, 2020) with Joan Judge. Among her honors are the National Humanities Center Fellowship (2012–2013), National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for University Teachers (1995), American Council of Learned Societies Mellon Fellowship (1986–1987), and Individual Award for Achievement in Printing History, American Printing History Association (2015–2016). Her scholarship has advanced the field of Chinese book history and its implications for social and political developments.