About:

Howard Chiang, Professor of East Asian Languages & Cultural Studies (by appointment) and History and Feminist Studies (by courtesy), holds the Lai Ho & Wu Cho-liu Endowed Chair in Taiwan Studies. He has written three monographs in Sinophone studies, forming a trilogy of queer Asian Pacific history through the lens of knowledge production. After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China (2018) analyzes the history of sex change in China from the demise of castration in the late Qing era to the emergence of transsexuality in Cold War Taiwan. Transtopia in the Sinophone Pacific (2021) proposes a new paradigm for doing transgender history in which geopolitics assumes central importance. Trans Without Borders: Decolonial Histories and the Epistemology of Taiwan (under contract) uses Taiwan’s alienating international status as a standpoint to forge unfamiliar engagements with and decolonize the history of transness. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Global Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History (2019), a landmark 3-volume reference compendium.

Chiang’s recent work centers on the historical and conceptual foundations of the human sciences, especially psychoanalysis, cultural psychiatry, and racial science. This will culminate in a book called The Confucian Freud (under contract), which explores the history of psychoanalysis and transcultural reasoning across the Pacific. A podcast on this project is available here. He is also completing a separate monograph, tentatively titled Historicizing Queer Sexology. He edits the “Critical Perspectives on Taiwan” book series from Columbia University Press and coedits the “Global Queer Asias” book series from the University of Michigan Press.

From 2019 to 2022, Chiang served as the Founding Chair of the Society of Sinophone Studies. His work has been supported by grants and fellowships from, among others, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, the George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study, the National Humanities Center, the Tang Prize Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust. Prior to joining UCSB as the Director of the Center for Taiwan Studies, he taught at NYU, the University of Warwick, the University of Waterloo, and UC Davis. At Waterloo, he was nominated for a Canada Research Chair in Transnational History.

Publications:

• Sinophone Studies Across Disciplines: A Reader, edited with Shu-mei Shih (Columbia University Press, 2024).
• Sinoglossia, edited with Andrea Bachner and Yu-lin Lee (Hong Kong University Press, 2023).
• Transtopia in the Sinophone Pacific (Columbia University Press, 2021).
  **Winner of the Bonnie and Vern L. Bullough Book Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ Studies, and Honorable Mention for the Alan Bray Memorial Book Award in LGBTQ Literary and Cultural Studies from the Modern Language Association.
• Queer Taiwanese Literature, edited (Cambria Press, 2021).
• Keywords in Queer Sinophone Studies, edited with Alvin K. Wong (Routledge, 2020).
• The Making of the Human Sciences in China: Historical and Conceptual Foundations, edited (Brill, 2019).
• The Global Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) History (3 vols), edited (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2019).
  **Winner of the Dartmouth Medal from the American Library Association.
• After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China (Columbia University Press, 2018).
  **Winner of the Best Book in the Humanities Prize from the International Convention of Asia Scholars and the Bonnie and Vern L. Bullough Book Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality.
• Sexuality in China: Histories of Power and Pleasure, edited (University of Washington Press, 2018).
• Perverse Taiwan, edited with Yin Wang (Routledge, 2016).
• Historical Epistemology and the Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, edited (Manchester University Press, 2015).
  **Translated into Mandarin Chinese as 历史认识论与现代中医的建构 (苏州: 苏州大学出版社, 2021).
• Psychiatry and Chinese History, edited (Pickering & Chatto, 2014).
• Queer Sinophone Cultures, edited with Ari L. Heinrich (Routledge, 2013).
• Transgender China, edited (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

Courses Taught:

• Critical Taiwan Studies: History, Literature, and Cinema (CHIN 138A)
• History of Sexuality in China (CHIN 152)
• Medical Humanities in East Asia (EACS 154)
• Sinophone Studies (EACS 158)
• Modern East Asia (EACS 4B)