Profile
Abstract
Elisabeth Kaske has joined Leipzig University as professor of modern Chinese society and culture in April 2017, after studying and teaching in Berlin, Beijing, Heidelberg, Frankfurt, Boston, Vienna, Pittsburgh, Taipei, and Princeton. As a historian of late Qing and early Republican China she is interested in China’s rugged path towards modernization. Her studies include the history of German-Chinese military exchange and technology transfer, the emergence of new concepts of language and education, the sale of rank and public office by the late imperial state, and the fiscal regime of the Qing dynasty. After having long focused on bureaucratic elites, she has recently become fascinated with how new professional elites, particularly engineers, imagined the nation and their own role in it.
Professional career
- 09/2006 - 07/2010
Junior Professor of Sinology, Frankfurt University - 09/2008 - 08/2009
An Wang postdoctoral fellowship, Harvard University, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies - 09/2009 - 02/2010
visiting professor, Institute for East Asian Studies, Vienna University (winter term) - 08/2010 - 07/2012
Assistant Professor of Chinese Studies, Department of Modern Languages, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh - 08/2012 - 03/2017
Associate Professor of Chinese Studies, Department of Modern Languages, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh - 01/2014 - 12/2014
Taiwan Fellowship, visiting scholar at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Taiwan - 09/2016 - 03/2017
The Starr Foundation East Asian Studies Endowment Fund Member at the Institute for Advanced Study, School of Historical Studies, Princeton - since 04/2017
Professor of Modern Chinese Society and Culture, Leipzig University
Education
- 10/2002 - 07/2006
Ph.D. dissertation in Sinology, Heidelberg University
I am a historian of China studying how the country adapted to the Western-dominated modern world order in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. My first book, Bismarcks Missionäre: Deutsche Militärinstrukteure in China, 1884–1890 (2001), is a microhistory of German military instructors hired in 1884. It examines the failure of technological transfer and challenges conventional narratives of “semi-colonialism” and “imperialism” in late Qing military reform. My second book, The Politics of Language in Chinese Education, 1895–1919 (2007), traced the emergence of China’s national language and showed how competing visions of China’s future led reformers to adopt different approaches to language and writing. Currently, I am finalizing a book entitled The Twilight of the Mandarins: Office Selling and the End of Imperial China which analyzes the practice of office selling and its fiscal and bureaucratic implications during the last fifty years of the Qing dynasty until its fall in 1911. My next project, The KMT’s Long March: Highways, War, and National Space in China’s Southwest, explores how the Nationalist government territorialized the interior during the Second Sino-Japanese War. This work extends my interest in technology and elite formation to the rise of new professional elites—engineers and technicians—in twentieth-century China.
- show detailsTwilight of the Mandarins: Office Selling and the End of Imperial ChinaKaske, ElisabethDuration: 10/2021 – 09/2022Funded by: Stiftungen InlandInvolved organisational units of Leipzig University: Ostasiatisches Institut; Gesellschaft und Kultur des modernen China
- show detailsSFB 1199/A06: Chinese Engineers and their Spatial Imaginations: Architects of an Interconnected Nation, 1906–1937Kaske, ElisabethDuration: 01/2020 – 12/2023Funded by: DFG Deutsche ForschungsgemeinschaftInvolved organisational units of Leipzig University: Leipzig Research Centre Global Dynamics (ReCentGlobe); Ostasiatisches Institut; Gesellschaft und Kultur des modernen China; SFB 1199: Verräumlichungsprozesse unter Globalisierungsbedingungen
- show detailsKaske, E.The Pitfalls of Transnational Distinction: A Royal Exchange of Honors and Contested Sovereignty in Late Qing ChinaIn: Mittler, B.; Yeh, C. V.; Gentz, N.; Gentz, J. (Eds.)China and the World—the World and China—A transcultural Perspective. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag. 2019. pp. 137–169.
- show detailsKaske, E.Taxation, Trust, and Government Debt: State-Elite Relations in Sichuan, 1850-1911Modern China. 2019. 45 (3). pp. 239–294.
- show detailsKaske, E.; Lin, M.-l.Public Finance, 1800-1950In: Ma, D.; von Glahn, R. (Eds.)Cambridge Economic History of China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2022. pp. 244–279.
- show detailsKaske, E.Austerity in times of war: government finance in early nineteenth-century ChinaFinancial History Review. 2018. 25 (S1). pp. 71–96.
- show detailsKaske, E.The KMT’s Long March: Highways, War, and National Space in China's Southwest.In: Kaske, E.; Köll, E. (Eds.)Age of Exploration: How Chinese Scientists and Administrators Discovered China. Oldenbourg: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. 2024. pp. 163–191.
I teach the social and cultural history of modern China since 1800. Classes explore the contemporary meaning of the past, and the historical roots of the present, and construe Chinese history as part of world history.
For a past teaching project see:
Kaske, Elisabeth. “Shi Lang Dajiangjun 施琅大将军 Admiral Shi Lang (TV-Drama, PR China 2006).” Representations of History in Chinese Film and Television, 2008. https://project.zo.uni-heidelberg.de/representations/shilang/shilang.html.
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03-SIN-0105 Basismodul Sinologie II Geschichte Chinas I
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03-SIN-0206 Basismodul Sinologie II Geschichte Chinas II
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The Art of the State: Narratives of the State, Bureaucrats, and Corruption in China
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China and the Great Divergence: Economy, Society, Environment
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Infrastructure, Empire and Nation in China and Asia
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Environment, State, and Society in Chinese History
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National Language Movements in China and Asia