Richard J Smith | Rice University (original) (raw)

Richard J. Smith received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis. He is George and Nancy Rupp Professor of Humanities emeritus, a Research Professor at the Chao Center for Asian Studies (https://chaocenter.rice.edu/), a James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy Scholar, and Director of Asian and Global Outreach (Center for Education) at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the Center for Asian Studies, University of Texas, Austin, and a member of several professional advisory boards, including the Advisory Board of Chinese Historians in the United States (CHUS), and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. Smith co-founded the Transnational China Project at the Baker Institute (http://www.ruf.rice.edu/\~tnchina/) and served for 15 years as the Director of Asian Studies at Rice (http://chaocenter.rice.edu/). His personal website is http://history.rice.edu/faculty/richard-j-smith.

A specialist in modern Chinese history and traditional Chinese culture, Smith also has strong interests in transnational, global and comparative studies.

Smith has won twelve teaching awards while at Rice, including the Phi Beta Kappa award (1978), several George R. Brown Superior Teaching awards (1980, 1982, 1983 and 1990), the Piper Professorship award (1987), the George R. Brown Certificate of Highest Merit (1992; mandatory retirement from the Brown teach award competition), the Sarofim Distinguished Teaching Professorship (1994), the Nicholas Salgo Distinguished Teaching Award (1996), and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching “Texas Professor of the Year” Award (1998).

Smith’s ten single-authored books include Mercenaries and Mandarins: The Ever-Victorious Army in Nineteenth Century China (1978); Traditional Chinese Culture: A Brief Introduction (1978); Fortune-tellers and Philosophers: Divination in Traditional Chinese Society (1991); Chinese Almanacs (1992); China’s Cultural Heritage: The Qing Dynasty, 1644-1912 (1994); Chinese Maps: Images of “All Under Heaven” (1996); Fathoming the Cosmos and Ordering the World: The Yijing (I Ching or Book of Changes) and Its Evolution in China (2008); The I Ching: A Biography (2012); Mapping China and Managing the World: Cosmology, Cartography and Culture in Late Imperial Times (2013) and The Qing Dynasty and Traditional Chinese Culture (2015).

He has also co-edited or co-authored nine volumes: Chinese Walled Cities (1979); Entering China’s Service (1986); Robert Hart and China’s Early Modernization (1991); Cosmology, Ontology, and Human Efficacy: Essays in Chinese Thought (1993); H. B. Morse, Customs Commissioner and Historian of China (1995); Different Worlds of Discourse: Transformations of Gender and Genre in Late Qing and Early Republican China (2008); Rethinking the Sinosphere: Poetics, Aesthetics, and Identity Formation (2020), Reexamining the Sinosphere: Cultural Transmissions and Transformations in East Asia (2020) and Under the Sign of the I Ching (2023).

He is currently working on a book titled Science and Medicine in Chinese Popular Culture, 1500–1800. It focuses primarily on Chinese "folk" beliefs and practices, as reflected in the accounts of contemporary observers (both Chinese and foreign), calendars and almanacs, encyclopedias of daily use, fengshui manuals, and other “popular" writings on topics such as astronomy/astrology, weather, geography, maps, medicine, child-rearing, human development, plants, animals, sexual life, etc. The book is divided into the three main categories of traditional Chinese epistemological concern: Heaven 天, Earth 地 and Man 人. For additional information, see Hanchao Lu, "Yasu Gongshang 雅俗共赏 (Appreciated By All): Richard J. Smith’s Ardent Engagement with Chinese Culture," The Chinese Historical Review 30.1 (May 2023), 103-125 and Richard J. Smith, “Magic Matters: Engaging with Nathan Sivin on the History of Divination, Medicine, and Popular Religion in China,” International Journal of Divination and Prognostication 5 (2023), 108-145.

Born in Sacramento, California, Smith had a brief flirtation with professional baseball before coming to his senses. He has been married to his gifted and charming wife for 57 years. They have a delightful and accomplished son, a wonderful daughter-in-law, and a granddaughter who defies description (in a good way).

Fall 2024

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