Chun-shu Chang

Name: Chun-shu Chang

Title(s):

• Professor

Contact Information: 734.763.2294 , cschang@umich.edu

International Institute Affiliation(s):

• CCS

Department Affiliation(s):

• History

Research/Teaching Specialization: Professor Chang completed his doctorate in Chinese history at Harvard in 1964 and joined the faculty of the University of Michigan in 1966. His fields of specialization include premodern Chinese history and civilization, classical Chinese and Chinese linguistics, traditional Chinese literature, and Chinese legal history. Most recently, Professor Chang has been working on a two volume treatise on "The Rise of the Chinese Empire," soon to be published by the University of Michigan Press. Vol. 1 will be examining "Nation, State, and Imperialism in Early China, ca. 1600 BC - 8 AD," and Vol. 2 is entitled "Frontier, Immigration, and Empire in Han China, 129 BC - 157 AD." The two books are the first and most ambitious attempt at a comprehensive reconstruction of ancient and early Imperial Chinese history (ca. 1600 BC - 200 AD), based on all literary and up-to-date archaeological sources and recently discovered ancient texts (including over 70,000 documents on wood and bamboo unearthed in the 20th century). Together they have analyzed the major developmental stages of the political, insitutional, social, economic, legal, military, religious, and thought systems. In its methodologial structure, the book follows Professor Chang's "comprehensive history" approach in historical analysis, and has made special efforts to utilize the interpretive insights and analytic techniques of all relevant allied fields, such as anthropology, archaeology, demography, economics, ethnography etymology, mythology, philology, political science, psychology, sociology, religion, textual criticisms, and traditional bibliographic science. It has thus blended the social science and humanistic approaches in its research and combined macrohistory and microhistory in its representation. He is additionally working on a book-length work entitled "From Scholarship to Statesmanship: The Intellectuals and Their Political World in Modern and Contemporary China, 1800-2000."