Thanks to the generous support from the Center of Chinese Studies, I spent almost every summer in the past few years working in the Shanghai library and making friends with local scholars and librarians. This tradition was disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. I was stuck in Berkeley and exiled from library stacks. Nevertheless, the research grant from CCS enabled me to focus on my dissertation research despite everything. With my interest in the physical form of the book and the materiality of writing, I always emphasize archival research. Yet the pandemic taught me a hard lesson, compelling me to realize that access to archives (even digital ones) was a privilege I had taken for granted. Making guarded archives accessible to researchers and readers became a new goal I set for my future research. My heartfelt thanks to CCS for supporting me to continue my research even when I thought it was impossible.
- Xiaoyu Xia
Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures
CCS Summer Research Grant