Hong XuGraduate Student
Hong Xu (Promise Xu) is a History Ph.D. student at Emory University. Previously, he was a world affairs journalist at China Central Television and then an independent journalist and scholar in Beijing. Xu was the founding editor-in-chief of The Kosmos, an independent Chinese quarterly of history and ideas. He is also an associate editor of VoegelinView and the author of China's Quest for Liberty: A Personal History of Freedom (St. Augustine's Press, 2019). His research interests lie in China's encounters with the West.
Hong Xu's intended dissertation project aims to recover the forgotten significance of American missionary Young John Allen, Chinese literati like Shen Yugui and Gong Xinming, and their international circle in the late Qing reform movements. It situates this Western and Chinese Christian intellectual community in not just the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries but the longer reach of Chinese and global histories. This study hopes to foreground the generally neglected religious dimension of Chinese modernity by drawing on a wide range of hitherto untapped sources that include the papers of Young John Allen kept at Emory's Rose Library.
Education
- C.R.U. Communication University of China
Research Interests
Modern Chinese History
American Religious History
US-East Asian Encounters
Dissertation
"Reforming the Central Empire: An American Missionary, Chinese Literati, and Their International Circle in Late Qing China"
