Occupation
Post-Doctoral Fellow
Contact
ABOUT
John Chen earned his PhD in History from Columbia University in 2018. He is currently a lecturer and Wm. Theodore de Bary Postdoctoral Fellow in Columbia's Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. His first book, The Worldliest Minority: A Global History of Muslims in Modern China, examines the transformation of Chinese Muslim (Hui) identity as they engaged with Islamic modernist thought from across the Middle East and Indian Ocean, but also played crucial roles in Chinese nation-building and domestic and foreign policies toward Muslims. More broadly, his interests combine Chinese, Islamic, Middle Eastern, and global history; intellectual and cultural history; and histories of science and medicine. His work has been published in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East (CSSAAME), SOJOURN: The Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, and ReOrient: The Journal of Critical Muslim Studies. He has lived, studied, and conducted research for over two years in Beijing and a year and a half in Cairo, where he completed the full-year course at the Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA). He received his AB in History and Arabic from Harvard University in 2008.
Discipline
History
Sub Areas
19th-21st Centuries
Arabic
Colonialism
History Of Medicine
History Of Science
Islamic Thought
Middle East/Near East Studies
Modernization
Nationalism
Southeast Asian Studies
State Formation
Translation
Transnationalism
World History
Geographic Areas of Interest
All Middle East
China
Egypt
Indian Ocean Region
Indonesia
Islamic World
Malaysia
Ottoman Empire
Southeast Asia
Yemen
Specialties
Chinese Islam/Islam In China
Islamic World
History Of Science, Medicine, & Knowledge
Languages
Arabic (fluent)
Chinese (advanced)
Spanish (advanced)
Education
PhD
| 2018
| History
| Columbia University
MA
| 2013
| History
| Columbia University
BA
| 2008
| History; Arabic
| Harvard University
Abstracts
Re-Orientation: The Chinese Azharites between “Umma” and “Third World,” 1938-1955
Another Sun in the East? "China" in Modern Arabic Thought
Debating Xinjiang in Cairo: Uyghur and Chinese Nationalisms’ Competition for Arab Public Opinion, 1927-49
