Profile
Abstract
Elisabeth Kaske has joined Leipzig University as professor of modern Chinese society and culture in April 2017, after studying and teaching in Berlin, Beijing, Heidelberg, Frankfurt, Boston, Vienna, Pittsburgh, Taipei, and Princeton. As a historian of late Qing and early Republican China she is interested in China’s rugged path towards modernization. Her studies include the history of German-Chinese military exchange and technology transfer, the emergence of new concepts of language and education, the sale of rank and public office by the late imperial state, and the fiscal regime of the Qing dynasty. After having long focused on bureaucratic elites, she has recently become fascinated with how new professional elites, particularly engineers, imagined the nation and their own role in it.
Professional career
- 09/2006 - 07/2010
Junior Professor of Sinology, Frankfurt University - 09/2008 - 08/2009
An Wang postdoctoral fellowship, Harvard University, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies - 09/2009 - 02/2010
visiting professor, Institute for East Asian Studies, Vienna University (winter term) - 08/2010 - 07/2012
Assistant Professor of Chinese Studies, Department of Modern Languages, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh - 08/2012 - 03/2017
Associate Professor of Chinese Studies, Department of Modern Languages, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh - 01/2014 - 12/2014
Taiwan Fellowship, visiting scholar at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Taiwan - 09/2016 - 03/2017
The Starr Foundation East Asian Studies Endowment Fund Member at the Institute for Advanced Study, School of Historical Studies, Princeton - since 04/2017
Professor of Modern Chinese Society and Culture, Leipzig University
Education
- 10/2002 - 07/2006
Ph.D. dissertation in Sinology, Heidelberg University
As a historian of China, Elisabeth Kaske studies China’s process of adapting to the Western-dominated modern world order during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Bismarcks Missionäre: Deutsche Militärinstrukteure in China, 1884-1890 (2001) is a microhistory of a group of German military instructors hired in Berlin in 1884. It explores the causes of failed technology transfer and questions the tropes of “semi-colonialism” and “imperialism” in the context of late Qing military reforms. The Politics of Language in Chinese Education, 1895-1919 (2007) combines political and intellectual history with sociolinguistics to study the language question (“la questione della lingua”). It shows that, when Chinese intellectuals realized that the classical language was no longer fit to provide general education and ensure national cohesion in the face of new challenges, their various schemes for a new written and spoken language for China were closely related to the authors’ visions of a future nation. For the last couple of years, Kaske has focused on the phenomenon of office selling in late imperial China and its repercussions in the fiscal and bureaucratic system. She is preparing a monograph entitled The Twilight of the Mandarins: Office Selling and the End of Imperial China. In the future, she plans to combine her interest in technology with her fascination with elites to study the rise of new professional elites of engineers and technicians in the twentieth century.
- show detailsTwilight of the Mandarins: Office Selling and the End of Imperial ChinaKaske, ElisabethDuration: 10/2021 – 09/2022Funded by: Stiftungen InlandInvolved organisational units of Leipzig University: Ostasiatisches Institut; Gesellschaft und Kultur des modernen China
- show detailsSFB 1199/A06: Chinese Engineers and their Spatial Imaginations: Architects of an Interconnected Nation, 1906–1937Kaske, ElisabethDuration: 01/2020 – 12/2023Funded by: DFG Deutsche ForschungsgemeinschaftInvolved organisational units of Leipzig University: Leipzig Research Centre Global Dynamics (ReCentGlobe); Ostasiatisches Institut; Gesellschaft und Kultur des modernen China; SFB 1199: Verräumlichungsprozesse unter Globalisierungsbedingungen
- show detailsKaske, E.The Pitfalls of Transnational Distinction: A Royal Exchange of Honors and Contested Sovereignty in Late Qing ChinaIn: Mittler, B.; Yeh, C. V.; Gentz, N.; Gentz, J. (Eds.)China and the World—the World and China—A transcultural Perspective. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag. 2019. pp. 137–169.
- show detailsKaske, E.Taxation, Trust, and Government Debt: State-Elite Relations in Sichuan, 1850-1911Modern China. 2019. 45 (3). pp. 239–294.
- show detailsKaske, E.; Lin, M.-l.Public Finance, 1800-1950In: Ma, D.; von Glahn, R. (Eds.)Cambridge Economic History of China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2022. pp. 244–279.
- show detailsKaske, E.Austerity in times of war: government finance in early nineteenth-century ChinaFinancial History Review. 2018. 25 (S1). pp. 71–96.
- show detailsKaske, E.The KMT’s Long March: Highways, War, and National Space in China's Southwest.In: Kaske, E.; Köll, E. (Eds.)Age of Exploration: How Chinese Scientists and Administrators Discovered China. Oldenbourg: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. 2024. pp. 163–191.
Elisabeth Kaske teaches the social and cultural history of modern China since 1800. Classes explore the contemporary meaning of the past, and the historical roots of the present, and construe Chinese history as part of world history.
For a past teaching project see:
Kaske, Elisabeth. “Shi Lang Dajiangjun 施琅大将军 Admiral Shi Lang (TV-Drama, PR China 2006).” Representations of History in Chinese Film and Television, 2008. https://projects.zo.uni-heidelberg.de/representations/shilang/shilang.html.
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03-SIN-0105 Basismodul Sinologie II Geschichte Chinas I
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03-SIN-0206 Basismodul Sinologie II Geschichte Chinas II
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The Art of the State: Narratives of the State, Bureaucrats, and Corruption in China
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China and the Great Divergence: Economy, Society, Environment
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Infrastructure, Empire and Nation in China and Asia
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Environment, State, and Society in Chinese History
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National Language Movements in China and Asia