China Initiative

Tamara Chin works on comparative approaches to the ancient world. Her book manuscript currently under review, The Silk Road Idea: Ancient Contact and the Modern Human Sciences, 1870-1970, offers a multiregional and multidisciplinary account of the study of premodern contact with China during the century spanning New Imperialism and Cold War decolonization.

Her first book, Savage Exchange: Han Imperialism, Chinese Literary Style, and the Economic Imagination (Harvard, 2014; pbk 2020) examined the politics of representation during the Han dynasty expansion of Chinese political empire and Silk Road trade. It received the American Comparative Literature Association Harry Levin Prize; Honorable Mention for the Association of Asian Studies Joseph Levenson Pre-1900 China Book Prize; International Convention of Asia Scholars Ground-Breaking Subject Matter Accolade.

Teaching and research interests include: Han dynasty literary and material culture; feminist economics and the history of economic thought; global classical reception studies; cross-cultural aesthetics; comparative China/Greece studies; ancient contact and exchange.

BA Harvard College, Classics and Literature

PhD UC Berkeley, Comparative Literature.