SHIFT+Asia: Digitizing Chinese Studies - Karl Gerth & Tom Mullaney

Dr. Karl Gerth interviews Dr. Tom Mullaney about his journey in building a digital humanities community for Asian studies and how a new set of analytic tools are disrupting and transforming the practice of teaching history and understanding various phenomena in China.

Karl Gerth is a professor of Modern Chinese history and holds the Hwei-Chih and Julia Hsiu Endowed Chair here at UC San Diego, he is writes on the history and contemporary implications of Chinese consumerism. His latest book is titled As China Goes, So Goes the World: How Chinese Consumers are Transforming Everything. It explores the wide-ranging ramifications and future implications of China’s shift toward a market economy over the past thirty years.

Tom Mullaney is a historian of China and of technology from Stanford University, and is currently working on a fascinating project examining Chinese typewriters and computers, with two books in the works through MIT Press. Tom’s collection of Chinese typewriters is now a museum exhibition called “Radical Machines: Chinese in the Information Age,” which will run through mid-April at the San Diego Chinese Historical Museum. He also directs Digital Humanities Asia, and is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Dissertation Reviews.

This episode was recorded at UC San Diego Studio Ten300

Host: Samuel Tsoi

Editors: Mike Fausner, Anthony King

Production Support: Lei Guang, Susan Shirk, Amy Robinson, Sarah Pfledderer, Michelle Fredricks

Music: Dave Liang/Shanghai Restoration Project

Episode photo credit: Michelle Fredricks