Historian Shuang Chen's book named 2017 Outstanding Academic Title

Saturday, March 3, 2018

Shuang ChenA 2017 book by Shaung Chen, Associate Professor of History at the University of Iowa, has been named an Outstanding Academic Title by Choice Reviews, the scholarly database of the Association of College and Research Libraries. ACRL, which also publishes Choice magazine, is a division of the American Library Association.

Every year in the January issue, in print and online, Choice publishes a list of Outstanding Academic Titles that were reviewed during the previous calendar year. This prestigious list reflects the best in scholarly titles reviewed by Choice and brings with it the extraordinary recognition of the academic library community.

Chen's book, State-sponsored inequality: the banner system and social stratification in northeast China (2017, Stanford University Press), explores the social economic processes of inequality in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century rural China. It was recognized by Choice as ". . . a wonderful example of how macro and micro history can reinforce each other without overly privileging one over the other."

Read the review (may require subscription) of Chen's book, from the October 2017 issue of Choice .

Shuang Chen received the BA and MA in history from Peking University, and the PhD in history from the University of Michigan. She joined the Department of History in 2010. As a historian of late imperial and modern China, her research interest encompasses social, economic, and political history, with an emphasis on exploring how the interplay of state and local institutions over the long term shaped modern Chinese society.

The Department of History is part of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

The University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences offers about 70 majors across the humanities; fine, performing and literary arts; natural and mathematical sciences; social and behavioral sciences; and communication disciplines. About 15,000 undergraduate and nearly 2,000 graduate students study each year in the college’s 37 departments, led by faculty at the forefront of teaching and research in their disciplines. The college teaches all Iowa undergraduates through the college's general education program, CLAS CORE. About 80 percent of all Iowa undergraduates begin their academic journey in CLAS. The college confers about 60 percent of the university's bachelor's degrees each academic year.