Thomas Mullaney

Thomas S. Mullaney is Professor of Chinese History at Stanford University, a Guggenheim Fellow, and Curator of the international exhibition, Radical Machines: Chinese in the Information Age. He is the author and editor of 7 books and special issues: -The Chinese Typewriter: A History (MIT Press 2017) -Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China (UC Press, 2010) -Your Computer is on Fire (MIT Press, Forthcoming) -The Chinese Deathscape (Stanford University Press, 2019) -Shift CTRL: Computing and New Media as Global, Cultural, Sociopolitical, and Ecological (Technology and Culture, 2019 Special Issue) -Towards a Global History of Non-Latin Type Design (Philological Encounters, Brill, 2019 Special Issue) -Critical Han Studies: The History, Representation and Identity of China’s Majority (UC Press, 2011) His writings have appeared in the Journal of Asian Studies, Technology & Culture, Aeon, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy, and his work has been featured in the LA Times, The Atlantic, the BBC, and in invited lectures at Google, Microsoft, Adobe, and more. He holds a PhD from Columbia University. His most recent book, The Chinese Typewriter, winner of the 2019 John K. Fairbank Prize, examines China’s development of a modern, nonalphabetic information infrastructure encompassing telegraphy, typewriting, word processing, and computing. This project has received three major awards and fellowships, including the 2013 Usher Prize, a three-year National Science Foundation fellowship, and a Hellman Faculty Fellowship. He directs Digital Humanities Asia (DHAsia), a program at Stanford University focused on East, South, Southeast, and Inner/Central Asia. DHAsia was recently the recipient of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar fellowship. He is also the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Dissertation Reviews, which publishes more than 500 reviews annually of recently defended dissertations in nearly 30 different fields in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Currently teaching