Staff profile

Hansun Hsiung combines methods from media history, book history, and the history of science to address fundamental problems in the global history of knowledge. His research to date has centered on the construction of "communicability," in particular tracing the transformation of print networks between Japan and western Europe, ca. 1750-1900. In addition to a book manuscript, Learn Anything!: Cheap Print and the Diffusion of Western Knowledge, he is at work editing a special issue of the Journal for the History of Knowledge on the epistemic implications of temporal entanglements; a special issue of Nuncius on intersensoriality and gender in the sciences; and a volume on the role of "compression" as a virtue in communications and information management systems. He is also working on a second monograph project on the prehistory of long-distance image transmission, rethinking the genealogy of tele-vision before the advent of contemporary televisual technologies. Articles on other various topics -- including amorous matchmaking in the social sciences, scientific 'popularization' in a global context, and breast cancer surgery in early modern Japan, have appeared or are forthcoming in journals such as Isis, Osiris, PMLA, and Contemporary Japan. Prior to his arrival at Durham, he was a postdoctoral fellow in Department II of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and a visiting lecturer in the Department of Music and Media Studies at Humboldt University (Berlin). His research has received support from the American Historical Association, the Association for Asian Studies, the Fulbright Program, and the Mellon Foundation.

• history of science
• history of the book
• global history
• media studies
• history of medicine
• history of technology

• Thinking East Asia

• Historical Media Epistemology Working Group, Kyoto University Institute for Research in Humanities

• 0000: Senior Fellow, Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography: Chair of Selection Committee; Member of Diversity & Outreach Committee

Book review

• Hsiung, Hansun (2021). Review of Into the Field: Human Scientists of Transwar Japan. Isis
• Hsiung, Hansun (2021). Review of Technical Knowledge in Early Modern Japan. East Asian Science, Technology and Medicine 53(1-2): 156-161.
• Hsiung, Hansun (2021). Review of Translation at Work: Chinese Medicine in the First Global Age. Medical History
• Hsiung, Hansun (2016). Review of The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan. Canadian Journal of History

Chapter in book

• Hsiung, Hansun & Schwartz, Kathryn A. (2021). Lithography. In Information: A Historical Companion. Grafton, Anthony, Goeing, Anja-Silvia, Blair, Ann & Duguid, Paul Princeton University Press. 583-88.
• Hsiung, Hansun (2021). Daigaku nankō, Kaisei gakkō. In Yōgakushi kenkyū jiten. Toshiyuki, Aoki, Kaibara, Ryō, Kutsuzawa, Nobukata, Satō, Kenichi, Van Daalen, Isabel & Matsukata, Fuyuko Shibunkaku shuppan. 180-181.
• Hsiung, Hansun (2018). Chi no rekishigaku to kindai sekai no tanjō [Histories of Knowledge and the Birth of the Modern World]. In = Edo-Meiji renzoku suru rekishi. Namikawa, Kenji & Furuie, Shinpei Fujiwara shoten. 52-67.
• Hsiung, Hansun (2017). The Circle of Knowledge: Radical Commensurability and the Deaf Textbook. In The Global Histories of Books: Methods and Practices. Rogers, Asha, Mukhopadhyay, Priyasha & Kunstmann, Rouven Palgrave Macmillan. 161-187.

Journal Article

• Hsiung, Hansun (2023). Complete, Accessible, Now: What Is Living and What Is Dead in the Research Library. Journal for the History of Knowledge 4.
• Hsiung, Hansun (2023). Ōbei kara mita Yōgakushi kenkyū arata na mondai ishiki to kokusai renkei no kanōsei [A Euro-American Perspective on Yōgaku Historiography: Challenges to Global History and Possibilities for International Collaboration]. Yōgaku. Annals of the Society for the History of Western Learning in Japan 30: 201-212.
• Hsiung, Hansun (2022). ’Use Me As Your Test!’ Patients, Practitioners, and the Commensurability of Virtue. Osiris 37: 273-296.
• Hsiung, Hansun & Serrano, Elena (2021). Introduction: Epistemologies of the Match. Isis 112(4): 760-765.
• Hsiung, Hansun (2021). Épistémologie à la japonaise: Kanamori Osamu and the history and philosophy of science in Japan. Contemporary Japan 33(1): 123-137.
• Hsiung, Hansun (2021). From Harmony to E-Harmony: Fourier, Social Science, and the Management of Love. Isis 112(4): 786-794.
• Hsiung, Hansun (2019). Whose Science Wins or Loses? (And What's Left for Reason After?). Isis 110(4): 770-774.
• Hsiung, Hansun (2019). Knowledge Made Cheap: Global Learners and the Logistics of Reading. PMLA: Special Issue: Cultures of Reading, ed. Evelyne Ender and Deidre Lynch 134(1): 137-143.
• Hsiung, Hansun (2012). Woman, Man, Abacus: A Tale of Enlightenment. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 72(1): 1-42.

Newspaper/Magazine Article

• Hsiung, Hansun (2021). Japan’s love affair with the fax machine – a strange relic of technological fantasies. The Conversation

Other (Digital/Visual Media)

• (2018). Timing the textbook: capitalism, development, and western knowledge in the nineteenth-century. digital.
• Hsiung, Hansun, Frampton, Stephanie Ann, Hepler-Smith, Evan & Robertson, Craig (2017). Virtual Roundtable on “Compression”. online.