My name is Dr. Xin Fan. Fan is my family name, 范鑫 in Chinese. As a global citizen, I grew up in China, have studied and worked in the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
As an expert in Modern Chinese History, I am fascinated by three general issues in historiography and intellectual history in a world-historical context: What is the relationship between past and present in a modern society? What is the relationship between foreign knowledge and indigenous intellectual tradition in a country where nationalism increasingly plays a dominant role in shaping its political consciousness? And how have cultural, social and political conditions affected the production of knowledge in a non-Western society such as China’s during the twentieth century? With these questions in mind, I have developed a broad interest in issues of knowledge production, which includes the sociology of knowledge, postcolonial theory, and recent developments in world and global history.
As a historian, I am the author of World History and National Identity in China: The Twentieth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2021). I also co-edited Receptions of Greek and Roman Antiquity in East Asia (Brill, 2018) with Professor Almut-Barbara Renger at Free University Berlin. I am currently working on a book manuscript tentatively titled, "The Right to Talk about China: The Rise of Emotional Politics," as well as collaborating with scholars in Europe, America, and Asia on several projects on nationalism, historiography, and conceptual history. In addition, I am writing about world-historical analogies.
I serve as the book reviewer editor of China and Asia: A Journal in Historical Studies.
As a teacher, I have taught at both public and private universities in Europe and America. At AMES, I teach courses on Chinese culture and history.
I am interested in supervising MPhil Students in Modern Chinese History with projects related to my research expertise.