Cynthia Brokaw researches the history of woodblock publishing and the history of the book in late imperial China. She is most interested how the textual knowledge was transmitted to non-elites over the course of the late Ming and Qing dynasties and what the political, social, and cultural repercussions of that knowledge transmission were.  To that end, she studies the increase and diffusion of commercial publishing operations; the simultaneous development of networks of bookselling; and the nature of the book culture that was spread through these networks over the course of the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries.

Cynthia Brokaw focuses her research on the history of the book in China from the late sixteenth century through the early twentieth century—that is, from the beginnings of the great boom in woodblock publishing that marked the late Ming through the Qing dynasty into the early twentieth century, when woodblock publishing was in decline. Printing and Book Culture in Late Imperial China (University of California Press, 2005), a volume of essays she co-edited with Kai-wing Chow, was one of the first works in English to explore this relatively new field within Chinese studies. Commerce in Culture: The Sibao Book Trade in the Qing and Republican Periods (Harvard University Asia Center, 2007) is a study of an important regional publishing industry, centered in the hinterland of southeastern China, and its role on the spread of book culture throughout south China from the late seventeenth through the early twentieth centuries. Based on archival work and extensive field work in the two villages that formed the core of this industry, this work examines the text-production process in Sibao, traces the networks of itinerant book-selling and bookstores through which Sibao texts were distributed, and describes the wide range of texts (primers and textbooks, ritual handbooks, medical manuals, fortune-telling guides, poetry collections, novels, etc.) that these rural publishers produced. Through the dissemination of these books, the Sibao publisher-booksellers were acting as agents of cultural integration, disseminating the core texts of Chinese culture to poor county seats, interior market towns, and isolated peasant villages.

She continues to work on topics in East Asian book history: the range of printing technologies employed in China, Korea, and Japan in the premodern period; the proliferation of popular woodblock-printed daily use encyclopedias and "how-to" manuals (and what their proliferation tells us about social changes and an expanded readership) in the late Ming and Qing dynasties; and the spread of commercial publishing and Chinese book culture to the southwestern hinterland during the Qing dynasty. 

“Intellectual Property with Chinese Characteristics,” in Ownership of Knowledge: Beyond IP, edited by Dagmar Schafer, Annapurna Mamidipudi, Marius Buning, and Mario Biagioli.  Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2023.

“The Colour Print and Early Modern Chinese Society,” in Handbook of the Colour Print in China, 1600-1800, edited by Anne Farrer and Kevin McLoughlin. Leiden: Brill, 2022. Pages 1-21.

“Later Imperial Vernacular Encyclopedias,” in Literary Information in China: A History, edited by Jack W. Chen, Anatoly Detwyler, Christopher M. B. Nugent, Xiao Liu, and Bruce Rusk. New York: Columbia University Press, 2021. Pages 316-323.

Publishing for Daily Life in Early Modern East Asia, Lingua Franca Issue 6 (2020), edited with Joan Judge: https://www.sharpweb.org/linguafranca/issue-6-2020/.

“Medieval and Early Modern East Asia,” in Oxford Illustrated History of the Book, edited by James Raven.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.  Pages 84-112.

“The Dance of ‘Old’ and ‘New’ in Chinese Print Culture, 1860s-1955,” Science in Context 30.3 (September 2017) (Special Issue: From Qing to China: Knowledge Systems in Transformation): 281-324.

“Empire of Texts: Book Production, Book Distribution, and Book Culture in Late Imperial China,” in Distant Relations: The Book Worlds of East and West, 1450-1850, edited by Peter Burke and Joseph McDermott. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2015. Pages 181-236.

“Regional Publishing and Late Imperial Scholarship: The Zunjing shuyuan  尊經書院 of Chengdu and Scholarly Publication in Late-Qing Sichuan,” in Imprimer autrement: Le livre non commercial dans la Chine impériale, edited by Michela Bussotti and Jean-Pierre Drège (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2014).

“The History of the Book in East Asia,” with Peter Kornicki, in The History of the Book in East Asia, edited with Peter Kornicki (Franham, UK: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2013). 

From Woodblocks to the Internet: Chinese Publishing and Print Culture in Transition, edited with Christopher A. Reed (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010).

Commerce in Culture: The Sibao Book Trade in the Qing and Republican Periods (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2007). Chinese translation:《文化贸易：清代至民国时期四保的书籍交易》(Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, forthcoming 2014).

Printing and Book Culture in Late Imperial China, edited with Kai-wing Chow (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005).

The Ledgers of Merit and Demerit: Social Change and Moral Order in Late Imperial China (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).  Chinese translation: 《功过格:中華帝囯晚期的社会変迁与道德秩序》(Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 2021).

Fellow, National Humanities Center, 2012-2013

Overseas Visiting Scholar, St. John's College, Cambridge University, Easter Term, 2009
Research Grant, Committee for Scholarly Communication with China (ACLS), 2008
National Endowment for the Humanities, awarded 2008-2009
CLIO Award for Outstanding Teaching in History from the Zeta Chapter, Phi Alpha Theta, June 2004
United States-China Cooperative Research Award, Henry Luce Foundation, 1999-2005
Member, School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, 1999-2000
Research Grant, Committee for Scholarly Communication with China, 1996
Fellowship for University Teachers, National Endowment for the Humanities, 1995
Research Grant, Committee for Scholarly Communication with China, Fall 1993
Fellow, Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute, Radcliffe College, Spring 1987
American Council of Learned Societies Mellon Fellowship for Young China Scholars, 1986-87

Association for Asian Studies
American Historical Association

Society for Ming Studies
Society for Qing Studies

As the historian of pre-modern Chinese history at Brown, I teach a wide range of courses in ancient and imperial Chinese history as well as courses that link China's past to its modern and contemporary history. In addition to surveys of late imperial history (the Song through the Qing dynasties), I offer specialized courses on early intellectual history, Confucianism in Chinese society, the literati elite and their political and social influence ("Knowledge and Power: The Elite of Late Imperial China"), on concepts of governance and social justice as forces that inspire both peasant rebellions and contemporary protests about official corruption and environmental degradation ("Social Justice and Popular Protest in China, Past and Present"), urbanization and changes in city life during the transition to modernity ("Cities and Urban Culture in China"), and women and gender relations in late imperial and modern China.