
Contact Information
2090A Foreign Language Building
707 South Mathews
Urbana, Illinois 61801
Research Interests
legal history, nationality law, cultures of law, gender studies, gender and law, medical history of ethics and law, borderland studies, ethnic groups in China, U.S.-East Asia relationship, Sino-Japanese relationship
Research Description
As a historian, I primarily study the historical roots of contemporary problems, and particularly problems concerning the making, shifting, and lifting of boundaries and borders in Chinese society. I pay special attention to peoples and places on the margins, intending to enrich our understanding of China as a historical concept and to bridge the gap between Asia-based and Europe/U.S.-based studies on common problems about social boundaries and legal borders. I have endeavored to cross the historical marks that conventionally distinguish “modern” from “pre-modern” and to traverse the existing national borders that define China.
Education
PhD, History Department, University of California Santa Barbara
LLM, College of Law, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Grants
IPRH Research Cluster 2019-2020
2012-2015 Andrew Mellon New Directions Fellowship
INTERSECT collaborative grant 2012-2014: Cultures of Law in Global Contexts
INTERSECT-Cultures of Law 2014-2016
Yellow Peril Redux: America’s Cultural Responses to the Economic Rise of Japan and China (co-PI: Mathew Brown). CEAPS Title VI Award, 2018-2020
2012-2013 ACLS Fellowship, Research in Humanities in China Program (funded by NEH)
2009-2010 Law and Society in China, Focal Point Initiative Grant, UIUC Graduate College (Collaboration with Law faculty)
2006-2007 UIUC Research Board Grant
Awards and Honors
2012-2016 Conrad Humanities Scholar Award
2013-2014 CAS Resident Associate
2011-2012 IPRH Fellowship, UIUC
2009-2010 Beckman Fellowship, Center for Advanced Studies, UIUC
2003-2004 An-Wang postdoctoral fellowship, Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, Harvard University
Courses Taught
Additional Campus Affiliations
Associate Professor, East Asian Languages and Cultures
Work in Progress
Book Projects:
"Bloodline and Borderline: Jus Sanguinis, Chinese Nationality Law, and State Succession, 1909-1997"
“State’s Rules and Doctors’ Roles: Chinese Female Obstetricians in the Early PRC”
Collaborative Research Projects:
“Cross-cultural Understanding of Power Harassment: Title VII and Title IX, Awareness and Actions”, with co-PIs: Colleen Murphy (Law and WGGP) and Nicole Allen (Psychology)
“Yellow Peril Redux: American Cultural Responses to Economic Rise of Japan and China,”
with Mathew Brown (UIS, Business Management)
Course Development Projects:
Yellow Peril Redux: From Coolies to Cars, Trade Wars, and Coronavirus
Gender and Women in East Asia
Highlighted Publications
Shao, D. (Accepted/In press). Red Star over Medicine: Redefining State-Doctor-Patient Relationship in the Early CPC History (1920s-1950s). East Asian Science, Technology and Society, 14.
Shao, D. (2017). Manchuria in Modern East Asia, 1600s–1949. In D. Ludden (Ed.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277727.013.141
Shao, D. (2011). Remote Homeland, Recovered Borderland: Manchus, Manchoukuo, and Manchuria, 1907–1985. (The World of East Asia). University of Hawai'i Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780824860226
Shao, D. (2009). Chinese by Definition: Nationality Law, Jus Sanguinis, and State Succession, 1909-1980. Twentieth-Century China, 35(1), 4-28. https://doi.org/10.1353/tcc.0.0019
Shao, D. (2008). Borders and Borderlands. In A. Iriye, & P-Y. Saunier (Eds.), The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History (pp. 99a-102b). Palgrave Macmillan.
Recent Publications
Shao, D. (Accepted/In press). Red Star over Medicine: Redefining State-Doctor-Patient Relationship in the Early CPC History (1920s-1950s). East Asian Science, Technology and Society, 14.
Shao, D. (2017). Manchuria in Modern East Asia, 1600s–1949. In D. Ludden (Ed.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277727.013.141
Shao, D. (2014). Review: Pär Kristoffer Cassel's Grounds of Judgment: Extraterritoriality and Imperial Power in Nineteenth-Century China and Japan. American Historical Review, 119(2), 488-489. https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/119.2.488
Shao, D. (2013). Review: Tina Phillips Johnson's Childbirth in Republican China: Delivering Modernity. Journal of Asian Studies, 72(2), 448-450. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021911813000168
Shao, D. (2012). Dilemma of Loyalty: Qing Loyalists and State Succession in the early 20th Century China. In C. Yang, & R. Whitfield (Eds.), Lost Generation: Luo Zhenyu, Qing Loyalists and the Formation of Modern Chinese Culture (pp. 210-227). (Saffron Asian Art and Society Series). Saffron.