Xin Fan

Xin Fan  

Professor of History 

Email  fanxin1@ShanghaiTech.edu.cn

Global history with a special interest in situating China's modern transformation within a world-historical context

Educational Background

Prior Employment

Profile

Xin Fan is a global historian with a strong research interest in studying modern China’s transformation within a world-historical context. He is the author of World History and National Identity in China: The Twentieth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2021) and Global History in China (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). He is also the co-editor of Receptions of Greek and Roman Antiquity in East Asia (Brill, 2018, with Almut-Barbara Renger) and The SAGE Handbook of Interpreting Chinese History (SAGE, forthcoming January 2026, with Kristin Stapleton and Els van Dongen). He previously served as Book Review Editor for China and Asia: A Journal in Historical Studies, and currently sits on the international advisory boards of China and Asia and Global Intellectual History. He is also an editorial board member for the book series Chinese Culture: Globality, Connectivity and Modernity (Springer) and FAU Studies and Sources in Sinology (FAU Press). His research articles and book reviews have appeared in leading journals such as the Journal of Asian History, Twentieth-Century China, Chinese Historical Review, Global Intellectual History, Contributions to the History of Concepts, and Storia della Storiografia.

Publications

Monographs

Fan, Xin. Global History in China. Palgrave Macmillan, July 2024.

Fan, Xin. World History and National Identity in China: The Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, February 2021.

(Reviewed in PRC History Review, Twentieth-Century China, Journal of Chinese History, Global Intellectual History, The China Journal, The Social Science Journal, and New Trends in Social and Liberal Sciences)

Edited Volume

Renger, Almut-Barbara, and Xin Fan, eds. Receptions of Greek and Roman Antiquity in East Asia. Boston: Brill, 2018.

Selected Journal Articles

Stefan, Berger, and Xin Fan. “Nationalisms in China and Europe: Culture, Politics and Perceptions,” submitted to Global Perspectives. (after revisions; forthcoming)

Fan, Xin. “Making Sense of the Political in Twentieth-Century China: Translation, Adaptation, and Appropriation,” Contributions to the History of Concepts 19, no. 2 (Summer 2024): 40–64.

———. “‘Xueshu shehgui’ de shuangchong kunjing: Zhishi shehui shi de kaochao” “學術社會的雙重困境”：知識社會史的考察 [The dilemma of the “academic society”: A study of knowledge sociology], Xin shixue新史學 [New historiography] 17 (2024): 47–68. (in Chinese; in production)

———. “‘International Law in Ancient China’: Eurocentrism and the Rethinking of Case Studies in Chinese Intellectual History,” Global Intellectual History 7, no. 2 (May 2022): 265–281.

———. “In Search of Contemporaneity in Globality: Qi Shirong and World-Historical Studies in China,” World History Studies 7, no. 1 (June 2020): 86–101.

———. “The Anger of Ping-Ti Ho: The Chinese Nationalism of a Double Exile,” Storia Della Storiografia (History of Historiography) 69, no. 1 (2016): 147–60.

———. “Historiography 1918-Today (China),” 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, edited by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson, issued by Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 2014-10-08. DOI: 10.15463/ie1418.10307.

———. “The Lost Intellectual Autonomy: State, Society, and Historical Writing in Republican China,” Berliner China-Hefte/Chinese History and Society 43 (2013): 64–76.

———. “Gu Jiegang and the Creation of Chinese Historical Geography.” The Chinese Historical Review 17, no. 2 (2010): 193–218.

Selected Book Chapters

Fan, Xin. Part III. “Chapter 11. The development of the history professor and its relation to the state.” In The SAGE Handbook of Interpreting Chinese History, edited by Kristin Stapleton, Xin Fan, and Els van Dongen. (Under revisions; forthcoming in 2025)

———. “World History in China.” In Routledge Handbook on East Asian Historiography, edited by Q. Edward Wang (under review).

———. “‘Nage chonggao de lixiang’: Ou-Mei shinian jiaoshi shengya” “那個崇高的理想”––歐美時間教師生涯 [“In the name of that noble dream”: ten years’ teaching in the United States and Europe], in Zai Meiguo jiao lishi: cong shuzhuo dao jiangtai在美國教歷史––從書桌到講台[Teaching History in America: From Students to Professors], edited by Yao Ping and Wang Xi, 487–500. Beijing: Peking University Press, 2022.

———. “Historical Analogies, Historia magistra vitae.” In Bloomsbury History: Theory and Method Articles. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021. Accessed October 21, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781350970885.074.

———. Introduction to the English edition of Lei Haizong’s Chinese Army and the Chinese Culture, translated by George Fleming, vii–xi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

———. “The Making of the Zhanguo Ce Clique: The Politicization of History Knowledge in Wartime China.” In The Engaged Historian: Perspectives on the Intersections of Politics, Activism and the Historical Profession, edited by Stefan Berger, 136–150. New York: Berghahn Books, 2019.

Renger, Almut-Barbara, and Xin Fan. “Receptions and Cross-Cultural Transfers: On Greco-Roman Antiquity in East Asia – Introduction.” In Receptions of Greek and Roman Antiquity in East Asia, 1–16.

———. “Imagining Antiquity in Twentieth-Century China.” In Receptions of Greek and Roman Antiquity in East Asia, 202–218.

———. “The Rise of World History in Late-Imperial China.” In The Routledge Companion to World Literature and World History: Circulation, Movement, Encounters, edited by May Hawas, 111–121. London and New York: Routledge, 2017.