Taking China Out of Premodern Global History: Bodies, Threads, and Fabrics

‘China’ is a problematical concept for the premodern period because the name unavoidably invokes the fixity of a modern nation-state that maps poorly onto the various and ever changing political formations of earlier centuries. This talk takes technologies of the body – viewed through various aspects of textiles – as cases through which to reframe our understanding of premodern Eastern Eurasia with interactions and relationships at the core of a non-sinocentric analysis.

Register here: https://princeton.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwoceuqrzsjG9bAzVYVz17Iv9oM9n9x3R8t