The Other Illegal Commodity: The Sino-European Book Trade in Canton, ca. 1831

The Institute for Chinese Studies at the Ohio State University presents a talk on the Sino-European book trade in Canton as part of the "China at a Crossroads" Lecture Series.

Patricia Sieber, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures, The Ohio State University

Patricia Sieber is interested in the canon formation surrounding Chinese vernacular genres from the Yuan period onward. She is the author of Theaters of Desire: Authors, Readers, and the Reproduction of Early Chinese Song-Drama, 1300-2000, a cross-cultural history of the construction and reception of "Yuan zaju." She currently is working on two book length studies, The Power of Imprints: Qing-Period Publishing and the Formation of European Sinology, 1720-1860 and The Lure of Songs: Genre, Locality, and Ethnicity in Yuan China. Other publications include an edited collection of short stories entitled Red Is Not the Only Color and articles on canon formation, visuality, performativity, and religion in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, CHINOPERL, Monumenta Serica, Journal of Chinese Religions, and Contemporary Buddhism among others. She teaches courses on different facets of traditional Chinese literature, including courses on traditional Chinese novels & drama, the intersection of traditional & modern Chinese literature, and comparative literary relations. She has been a fellow at the Center for Chinese Studies, National Central Library (Taipei), at the Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities (OSU), and at the Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.). Her research has been awarded funding from the NEH, ACLS, DAAD and the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation among others. She has presented her research in the US, Europe, China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. As a two time recipient of OSU's East Asian Studies Center FY National Resource Center (NRC) and Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) grants from the U.S. Department of Education, she currently serves as the director of OSU's East Asian Studies Center.

Areas of Expertise
Chinese Literature

Education
M.A., Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley (Chinese literature)