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

• 2000: Senior Fellow, Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography: Chair of Selection Committee; Member of Diversity & Outreach Committee

Book review

• Hsiung, H. (2024). Stephen Robertson. B C, Before Computers: On Information Technology from Writing to the Age of Digital Data. x + 161 pp., illus., bibl., indexes. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2020. £18.95 (paper); ISBN 9781800640290. Cloth and e-book available. Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society, 115(2), 430-431. https://doi.org/10.1086/730238
• Hsiung, H. (2021). Review of Technical Knowledge in Early Modern Japan. East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine, 53(1-2), 156-161. https://doi.org/10.1163/26669323-53010013
• Hsiung, H. (2021). Review of Into the Field: Human Scientists of Transwar Japan. Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society, 112(2), https://doi.org/10.1086/714673
• Hsiung, H. (2021). Review of Translation at Work: Chinese Medicine in the First Global Age. Medical History, 65(3), 307-309. https://doi.org/10.1017/mdh.2021.21
• Hsiung, H. (2016). Review of The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan. Canadian Journal of History, 51(3), https://doi.org/10.3138/cjh.ach.51.3.rev12

Chapter in book

• Hsiung, H. (2023). The Problem of Western Knowledge in Late Tokugawa Japan. In The New Cambridge History of Japan. Volume II: Early Modern Japan in Asia and the World, c. 1580-1877 (363-396). Cambridge University Press
• Hsiung, H. (2021). Daigaku nankō, Kaisei gakkō. In A. Toshiyuki, R. Kaibara, N. Kutsuzawa, K. Satō, I. Van Daalen, & F. Matsukata (Eds.), Yōgakushi kenkyū jiten (180-181). Shibunkaku shuppan
• Hsiung, H., & Schwartz, K. A. (2021). Lithography. In A. Grafton, A.-S. Goeing, A. Blair, & P. Duguid (Eds.), Information: A Historical Companion (583-88). Princeton University Press
• Hsiung, H. (2018). Chi no rekishigaku to kindai sekai no tanjō [Histories of Knowledge and the Birth of the Modern World]. In K. Namikawa, & S. Furuie (Eds.), = Edo-Meiji renzoku suru rekishi (52-67). Fujiwara shoten
• Hsiung, H. (2017). The Circle of Knowledge: Radical Commensurability and the Deaf Textbook. In A. Rogers, P. Mukhopadhyay, & R. Kunstmann (Eds.), The Global Histories of Books: Methods and Practices (161-187). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51334-8_7

Journal Article

• Hsiung, H. (online). Racializing Print Capitalism in the Transimperial Pacific: “The Printers Fear the Invasion of the Yellow Peril”. Journal of Social History, https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shae040
• Hsiung, H. (2024). Television and the Origins of Visual Pattern Recognition AI in Japan: a ‘Quest for a Seeing Machine’. Asiascape: Digital Asia, 11(1-2), 3-31. https://doi.org/10.1163/22142312-bja10054
• Hsiung, H. (2024). The Gentleman, the Detective, and the Housewife: Sensory Worlds of Experiment in Japanese Thoughtography, 1910–1911. Nuncius: Journal of the Material and Visual History of Science, 39(2), 390-416. https://doi.org/10.1163/18253911-bja10083
• Hsiung, H., Montero, E., & Serrano, E. (2024). Introduction: The Stormy Swirl of Sensations. Nuncius: Journal of the Material and Visual History of Science, 39(2), 259-74. https://doi.org/10.1163/18253911-bja10107
• Hsiung, H. (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]
• Hsiung, H., Lenel, L., & Meister, A.-M. (2023). Introduction: Entangled Temporalities. Journal for the History of Knowledge, 4, 9-32. https://doi.org/10.55283/jhk.17017
• Hsiung, H. (2023). Complete, Accessible, Now: What Is Living and What Is Dead in the Research Library. Journal for the History of Knowledge, 4, https://doi.org/10.55283/jhk.12409
• Hsiung, H. (2022). ’Use Me As Your Test!’: Patients, Practitioners, and the Commensurability of Virtue. Osiris, 37, 273-296. https://doi.org/10.1086/719230
• Hsiung, H. (2021). From Harmony to E-Harmony: Fourier, Social Science, and the Management of Love. Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society, 112(4), 786-794. https://doi.org/10.1086/716883
• Hsiung, H., & Serrano, E. (2021). Introduction: Epistemologies of the Match. https://doi.org/10.1086/716882
• Hsiung, H. (2021). Épistémologie à la japonaise: Kanamori Osamu and the history and philosophy of science in Japan. Contemporary Japan, 33(1), 123-137. https://doi.org/10.1080/18692729.2020.1847390
• Hsiung, H. (2019). Whose Science Wins or Loses? (And What's Left for Reason After?). Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society, 110(4), 770-774. https://doi.org/10.1086/706532
• Hsiung, H. (2019). Knowledge Made Cheap: Global Learners and the Logistics of Reading. PMLA, 134(1), 137-143. https://doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2019.134.1.137
• Hsiung, H. (2012). Woman, Man, Abacus: A Tale of Enlightenment. Harvard journal of Asiatic studies, 72(1), 1-42. https://doi.org/10.1353/jas.2012.0007

Newspaper/Magazine Article

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

Other (Digital/Visual Media)

• Hsiung, H. (2024). Timing the textbook: capitalism, development, and western knowledge in the nineteenth-century
• Hsiung, H., Frampton, S. A., Hepler-Smith, E., & Robertson, C. (2017). Virtual Roundtable on “Compression”