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Background

Yi Wang specializes in the social and cultural history of late imperial and modern China, with a research focus on the history of borderlands and trans-regional migration in the Qing and the twentieth century. Her first book, Transforming Inner Mongolia: Commerce, Migration, and Colonization on the Qing frontier (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021), analyzes the dramatic impact of Han Chinese migration into Inner Mongolia during the Qing era. It examines how processes of commercial expansion, land reclamation, and Catholic proselytism transformed the Mongol frontier long before it was officially colonized and incorporated into the Chinese state. Her current project focuses on Inner Mongolia’s quest for autonomy and explores the intertwined relationship between competing forms of nationhood, frontier-making, and knowledge production across East and Inner Asia in the twentieth century. Wang teaches introductory survey of East Asian civilizations, as well as thematic courses on late imperial, twentieth-century China, and ethnic minorities of China. Her graduate seminars (often cross-listed with senior seminars) deal with imperialism, nationalism in East Asia, and China’s borderlands.

Education

• PhD, University of Chicago
• MA, Sun Yat-Sen University
• MA, University of Illinois

Research Interests

• Late Imperial China
• borderlands
• migration
• nationalism