Miranda Brown

I am a cultural historian of China, whose primary interests lie in recipes of all kinds: culinary and medical. I have published numerous articles on various aspects of Chinese medical, culinary, and cultural history in English and Chinese. I am also the author of The Politics of Mourning in Early China (2007) and, with the late Conrad Schirokauer, the co-author of A Brief History of Chinese Civilization (2012). 

Most recently, I published The Art of Medicine in Early China: The Ancient and Medieval Origins of a Modern Archive (2015). In this book, I investigate the formation of the archive used by current scholars to tell the history of Chinese medicine. The Art of Medicine reveals how premodern forms of Chinese knowledge production were integrated into the current historiography.  It calls upon modern scholars to break with the longstanding habit of treating non‑Western and particularly pre-modern traditions as mere “content providers” for contemporary theory.

Current research projects

I am now writing a book on the history of dairy in China before the twentieth century, a topic that has received scant attention in the West. The first installment of this project, which examines the cheeses from the Shanghai region in the sixteenth century, will appear in Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies in 2019. This project grows out of my previous work in the history of medicine, my general interest in recipes, and my longstanding fascination with the connections between foodways and environment.  

My current research agenda and approach owes much to the conversations that I have had with my collaborators at the University of Michigan and elsewhere, with whom I founded Fragments: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Ancient and Medieval Pasts. Fragments is an open-access journal that invites premodernists to engage in broader conversations that cross the boundaries created by regional specialization and historical periodization.

I am also organizing a conference on the global history of Chinese food, scheduled for December 2019. The conference, which has received support from the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies, UM Confucius Institute, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, and other units in the University of Michigan, will illuminate the transnational journeys of Chinese food. It will challenge scholars and foodies to reconsider notions of culinary authenticity, and hopes to initiate conversations between historians of Asia and scholars of Asian America.

Teaching interests

I teach undergraduate and graduate courses on various aspects of Asian history, including ASIAN 258: Food and Drink of Asia. I mentor graduate students through the teaching of advanced seminars as well as through active collaboration on research projects. The seminars include ASIAN 535: History of Chinese Science, and ASIAN 585: Historical Studies of Food in China.