Jenny Huangfu Day

Professor and Interim Chair Fall 2025

Jenny Huangfu Day 皇甫峥峥 is a Professor of History and the Francis Young Tang ‘61 Chair in China Studies at 暖暖直播 College. She obtained her PhD in History from the University of California San Diego in 2012 and her BA from the University of Washington in 2007. She has published works in intellectual, diplomatic, and legal history of late imperial and modern China.

Her forthcoming monograph examines international law and transnational fugitives in modern China. It examines the role of Sino-foreign diplomats, jurists, and political actors in creating the boundaries of legitimate political actions. It tells the story about how the Qing and its Republican successor states negotiated for the right to declare their enemies, define their crimes, and gain juridical sovereignty over transborder rebels from the 1860s to the 1930s.

Her next book project will explore the politicization of history in modern China. It seeks to understand how policymakers, bureaucrats, intellectuals, and grassroots educators understood the goals of historical education from the late Qing to the post-Mao period.

Books

• Transborder Fugitives, Extradition, and Political Crimes in Modern China. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.
• Qing Travelers to the Far West: Diplomacy and the Information Order in Late Imperial China. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018. (Outstanding Academic Title of 2019 by ACRL Choice.)
• (Chinese translation in progress) Zouru Taixi de lüzhe : wan Qing waijiao yu xinxi zhixu 走入泰西的旅者：晚清外交與信息秩序. Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe 上海人民出版社, forthcoming.
• Wanqing zhu Ying shiguan zhaohui dang’an 晚清駐英使館照會檔案 [Letters from the Qing Legation in London]. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe 上海古籍出版社, 2020.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

• “From Envoy Journals to Legation Reports: Regulating Knowledge of Foreigners in Late Imperial and Modern China.”Journal of Modern Chinese History, vol. 16, no. 1 (2022): 91-122.
• “The Enigma of a Taiping Fugitive: The Illusion of Justice and the ‘Political Offence Exception’ in Extradition from Hong Kong.”Law and History Review, vol. 39, no. 3 (2021): 415-450.
• “Mediating Sovereignty: The Qing Legation in London and its Diplomatic Representation of China, 1876-1901,”Modern Asian Studies, vol. 55, no. 4 (2021): 1151-1184.
• “The Textbook War: Educating Children in the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945,” Twentieth-Century China, vol. 46, no. 2 (2021): 105-129.
• “晚清驻英公使馆与国际法的运用：以双语照会為中心的考察,” 中華文史論叢, no. 2 (2020): 85-115.
• “From Fire-Wheel Boats to Cities on the Sea: Changing Perceptions of the Steamships in the Late Qing, 1830s-1900s,” Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies, vol. 21, no. 1 (2015): 50-63.
• “Searching for the Roots of Western Wealth and Power: Guo Songtao and Education in Victorian England,” Late Imperial China, vol. 35, no. 1 (June 2014): 1-37.
• “Roads to Salvation: Shen Congwen, Xiao Qian and the Problem of Non-Communist Celebrity Writers, 1948-1957,”Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, vol. 22, no. 2 (Fall 2010): 39-87.

Other Publications

• “Guo Songtao: Diplomat and First Chinese Minister to Britain,” in Creators of Modern China: 100 Lives – From Empire to Republic, 1796-1912.
• “Kua Xueke de waijiao xinxi shi” 跨學科的外交信息史 [On the history of diplomacy and information order across disciplines], 澎湃, 5/17/2021.
• “Visualizing Qing Diplomats in the West,” Visualising China, 10/23/2020.
• “Three Ways of Incorporating Storytelling into Chinese History Courses,” Education about Asia, vol. 24, no. 3 (2019).