Dan Du

Research Interests

Business History; Material Culture Studies; Chinese History; Nineteenth-Century U.S. History

Education

Ph.D., History, University of Georgia, 2017
M.A., History, Nankai University, 2009
B.A., History and B.S., Economics, Nankai University, 2006

Current Projects

My current book project, “This World in a Teacup: Chinese-American Tea Trade in the Nineteenth Century,” examines financial instruments employed by Chinese and American tea merchants and the socio-cultural influence of the trans-Pacific tea traffic on tea production, transportation, and consumption in China and the United States.

Growing out of the research on the tea trade, the other two projects respectively examine tea consumption in the post-Revolutionary United States and credit instruments (akin to modern promissory notes and bills of exchange) used in pre-modern Asian trade.

Selected Publications

“‘Flying Cash’: Credit Instruments on the Silk Roads,” in Jefferey Lerner and Yaohua Shi ed., The Silk Roads: From Local Realities to Global Narratives (Oxford, U.K.: Oxbow Books, 2020), 237-264.

“Green Gold and Paper Gold: Seeking Independence through the Chinese-American Tea Trade, 1784-1815 (Link to Academia),” Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 16, no. 1 (2018): 151-191. (Reprinted in Chinese in Nankai shixue, vol. 27, no.1 (2019): 265-306.)

Courses Taught

HIST3002 Made in China: Modern Chinese History in Objects (Students’ Online Exhibits)

HIST2600 Chinese-American Trade in the 19th Century

HIST2201 Modern East Asia

LBST2301 History of the Silk Road

Selected Research Awards and Fellowships

External Research Awards and Fellowships

2021 NEH-MHS Long Term Fellowship, National Endowment for the Humanities & Massachusetts Historical Society

2020 Franklin Research Grant, American Philosophical Society

2018  Outstanding Overseas Students Award, China Scholarship Council

2017  Short-Term Fellowship, Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library

2016 Gilder Lehrman Fellowship, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

2016 Smithsonian Institution Predoctoral Fellowship, National Museum of American History

2016 Program in Early American Economy and Society (PEARS) Short-Term Fellowship, Library Company of Philadelphia

2015  Peabody Essex Museum Phillips Library Research Fellowship, Peabody Essex Museum

2014  New England Regional Fellowship, New England Regional Fellowship Consortium

Internal Research Awards and Fellowships

2021 Frances Lumsden Gwynn Award, UNC Charlotte

2021 Junior Faculty Development Award, UNC Charlotte

2018 Faculty Research Grant, UNC Charlotte

2018 Excellence-in-Research Award, University of Georgia