Doing Comparative History: a report from the trenches

It is far from easy to do either cross-chronological or cross-cultural history well. As someone engaged for nearly forty years in forging comparisons of both types, I have experienced the promise and perils, as well as the blank walls. Far too few historians think about what topics are truly comparable; at the same time, the minute we think or write or talk about another era or another culture in English, we are doing comparative history, and to pretend otherwise is likely to spur ahistorical imaginaries. This talk will try to summarize what comparative approaches generally work and where the greatest obstacles always lie, based on my own experience and that of my two teachers Michael Loewe and Nathan Sivin.

Reception to Follow

Michael Nylan, Jane K. Sather Chair of History at University of California, Berkeley, was lucky to be taught by a number of Sinological giants, including Nathan Sivin and Michael Loewe, William Hung (Hong Ye) and Qu Wanli, Henry Rosemont, Jr. and Herbert Fingarette. Her current work focuses on the political theories and practices of the early empires (323 BC-AD 316), where she finds abundant evidence that the Ancients were “in better shape” than we in today’s world. She teaches and researches conceptions of the body and body politic, on environmental policies and ethics, and on the local administration outside the capital, at the county and sub-county levels. Her most recent work, reflecting the received and excavated texts, includes a mammoth translation of the Han-era Documents classic (University of Washington Press), in press; a co-authored entitled Environmental Equity in China and Beyond (published); three essays for two new Cambridge Histories (“Confucianism” and “Democracy before AD 1350), in press; and a comparison of the histories conceived by Sima Qian and Ban Gu, Herodotus and Thucydides, co-written with two classicists.