History Department Faculty
Ling Zhang
Associate Professor, Director of the History Core
Ling Zhang
Ph.D.
Contact
Stokes Hall Room S357
Telephone: 617-552-3031
Email: ling.zhang.2@bc.edu
Education
- Ph.D., Cambridge University
Research Interests
Environmental, economic, and political history of pre-modern China, regional studies, political economy, political ecology, environmental justice, environmental philosophy and ethics
Expertise
- China
- Economic History, Labor, & Migration
- Environment & Food Sustainability
- History
Department
Biography
Born and raised in a river town in southeast China, Ling Zhang studied history, philosophy, and literature at Peking University (Beijing) and studied economic and environmental history of medieval north China at University of Cambridge (UK). Before joining Boston College, Ling was a lecturer at Newcastle University, a Ziff Environmental Fellow at Harvard University Center for the Environment, and a postdoctoral fellow in the Program of Agrarian Studies at Yale University. Ling's research interests include Chinese history, political economy, political ecology, science studies, and environmental studies in general. Ling's first book The River, the Plain, and the State: An Environmental Drama in Northern Song China, 1048-1128 (Cambridge University Press, 2016) received the 2017 George Perkins Marsh Prize for the Best Book in Environmental History by the American Society for Environmental History. Ling is currently working on two book projects: "North China during the Medieval Economic Revolution'' and "China's Sorrow or the Yellow River 's Sorrow: Environmental Biographies of a River Community." As an associate researcher at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Ling convenes research seminars and conferences for the Center's "Environment in Asia" series. Ling is a Series Co-Editor (with John McNeill) of the "Studies in Environment and History" book series, published by Cambridge University Press.
REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS
- The River, the Plain, and the State: An Environmental Drama in Northern Song China, 1048-1128. In the series "Studies in Environment and History," edited by John R. McNeill and Edmund R. Russell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Winner of the 2017 George Perkins Marsh Prize as the Best Book in Environmental History from the American Society for Environmental History. - “Manipulating the Yellow River and the State Building of the Northern Song Dynasty,” in Nature, the Environment and Climate Change in East Asia, Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut, ed. Carmen Meinhert (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming)
- “Harmony or Disharmony: Traditional Chinese and Their Natural Environment,” in Demystifying China: New Understandings of Chinese History, ed. Naomi Standen (Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012)
- “Ponds, Paddies, and Frontier Defence: Environmental and Economic Changes in Northern Hebei in Northern Song China (960-1127),” Journal of Medieval History 14.1 (2011)
- “Changing with the Yellow River: An Environmental History of Hebei, 1048-1128,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 69.1 (2009)