Jason Protass

Mid-Autumn, Tiger Hill, Late Ming "Everyone was perfectly silent, even the mosquitoes."

For the Mid-Autumn Festival, I translated the 17th century failson, epicure, and memoirist Zhang Dai's account of the annual Mid-Autumn singing competition on Tiger Hill in Suzhou. www.burninghou.se/p/mid-autumn...

publication day for my *Documents géographiques de Dunhuang*, a social and cultural history of geographical knowledge, and probably one of the only medieval history books published in France during the ephemeral Lecornu government, which you can freely download here: books.openedition.org/cdf/20307

Coming (quite) soon
reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/sons-of...

The Factory Workers Who Helped Build a Nation A photographer strives to protect the memory of China’s Third Front Movement and the families who dedicated their lives to it.

“It’s not about nostalgia; it’s about making sure we remember.” Photographer Song Zeyi visits the abandoned factories of Mao's Third Front—a movement that had consequences for generations of Chinese workers, including Song's own family. At @sixthtone.bsky.social.

CfP for an exciting animal panel at the upcoming Association of Art History Conference (University of Cambridge, 8-10 April 2026). A great opportunity for Chinese animal / art scholars! 🎨🐝🐸

Call to submit papers to the Environmental Graduate Symposium at Yale University! Link to submit: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Planned Research Projects Here you can find an overview of all research projects and the corresponding job vacancies in the Cross-Cultural Philology Cluster of Excellence.

12 Phd/ 17 Postdoc positions (fully funded) in the new Cross-Cultural Philology Cluster at LMU Munich: www.lmu.de/crosscultura... (apply by Oct 21).

Attention Medievalists: @barbararosenwein.bsky.social (who likely wrote your medieval studies textbook, among many other things) is on Bluesky. Welcome to one of the best historians of premodern emotions that we got!

One of my posts started to attract weird interactions. I deleted it.

Thanks. That’s useful advice.

This dissertation is already defended and deposited. The committee missed it, so all the evidence is now already in the archive.

I am shocked at the malpractice of the advisors.

One of my favorite poems since childhood, and a poem I share every #autumnequinox.
By the 12thc warrior poet Xin Qiji 辛棄疾, sidelined during peacetime, demoted, drifting through a decade of minor posts in remote lands.
Poetry, then, is that which is left unsaid.
“My, what a cool and lovely autumn.”

Tenure-track position in contemporary Chinese society (283182) | University of Oslo Job title: Tenure-track position in contemporary Chinese society (283182), Employer: University of Oslo, Deadline: Monday, October 27, 2025

My department is hiring! Apply to join me in Oslo :)
www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

In Memoriam: Paul A. Cohen (1934-2025) - Association for Asian Studies Paul A. Cohen, who died on September 15, 2025 at the age of 91, made significant contributions to both the interdisciplinary field of Chinese studies and the discipline of history. The most obvious wa...

My tribute to Paul Cohen as historian & mentor to many www.asianstudies.org/in-memoriam-... cc @lmansley.bsky.social

My review of Ayoush Lazikani’s ‘The Medieval Moon’, in the latest @historytoday.com

"drastic plans to halve the intake of humanities students at one of China’s most prestigious institutions, Fudan University, divided opinions among scholars." Has anyone seen more on this?

Excellent. Thank you!

The Fourth Middle-Period China Humanities conference in Hong Kong, summer 2026. Hope to see many of you there!

I remember reading something about mechanical Nianfo by … Natasha Heller, maybe?

And I’ve read about sacred sound and architecturedesign in medieval France, cool work by Sheila Bonde studying how bells and other sound move in valleys and monastery landscapes.

Would be interested to learn more.

Updated question : can the garden in China provide ways to think about the environmental ethics of Buddhist temples in Ming-Qing southern China?

Now gathering essays on Buddhist estates as / in / and gardens.

End of a research and writing week.

The Technopolitics of China’s Yarlung Tsangpo Dam Project and the Paradox of Hydropower | Made in China Journal Three years after announcing their intent to construct a mega-dam along the Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra) River as part of the Fourteenth Five-Year Plan, Chinese officials gave their approval to proce...

From Sanmenxia and Three Gorges to the Yarlung Tsangpo Dam, China has long relied on monumental hydropower to prove state capacity. @zenel25.bsky.social and @pguer.bsky.social show how such projects, while promising development and security, often deepen the very insecurities they claim to resolve.

Just cracked open four double-yolk eggs in a row.

If the odds of one are 1-in-1,000 …. should I buy lottery ticket?

One more for the bibliography here, focused on Christian missionary image-making practices. Might make an interesting compare/contrast example to practices of Buddhists.

Joseph W. Ho, /Developing Mission: Photography, Filmmaking, and American Missionaries in Modern China/ (Cornell, 2022)

Back at it this morning, and remembered this short essay by Allen Hockley about John Thomson’s photographs, which focuses almost entirely on religious subjects in Thomson’s lens.

visualizingcultures.mit.edu/john_thomson...

Basically, I think art historians do cool work, and I want to think about Buddhist things while using their analytic toolkit. I’m surprised there isn’t someone already doing art history + Buddhist studies for early photography.

Can’t wait!

I was reading good work on early Chinese photography, by Wu Hung, Roberta Wue, &al. But these scholars don’t talk about religion. Would a history of Buddhism in photo-books and media take up their arguments? Does Buddhist photography present a counter-narrative?

How could I forgot! Great essay. He deftly shows a creative Buddhist use of the medium.

It’s not a survey or history of how Buddhism was figured across photography, which is what I had in mind.

When I write him, I can ask about work in Chinese.

I taught that essay 3 or 4 times. Always a hit.

The most useful (and only) thing I found is this blogpost by @sudasana.bsky.social about the old photograph collection at Bristol.

Reading poetry; collecting old photographs; writing; and writing; to not get sucked into the discourse.

How do aesthetics connect to environmental ethics?

Has anyone written a study of how Buddhism is figured in early Chinese photography?

End of a long research day.