Mid-term Report
The first year of my two-year National Science Council Grant has been vital to my research and writing. I am grateful for the financial resources given for research assistants, office materials, research stipend, and trips abroad to do research/present at a conference.
The opportunity to present a paper at the American Historical
Association’s 124th annual meeting was an invaluable chance to get feedback on my research from top scholars. I put together a panel on “American History through East Asian Lenses: Anti-Americanism, Exceptionalisms, and Abraham Lincoln,” which included scholars from the Republic of Korea and Hong Kong. My paper, “Lincoln in Taiwan: An American President and the Republic of China’s Contest for Identity,” was well received. After the conference, I was invited by an editor of the Pacific Historical Review to submit the paper for possible publication. At the AHA, I also made connections with scholars, ties that will be valuable in improving my research/writing.
My “Lincoln in Taiwan” paper is being edited for publication, the
assistance given to me by my NSC assistants on Chinese language materials being vital. I have also begun other projects dealing with Taiwanese-American cultural relations with their help finding and translating materials.
The research trip to Chicago university libraries and museum archives has helped my research and will influence my writing for years to come. The libraries/research collections at the University of Chicago, University of Illinois at Chicago, Newberry Library, and Chicago History Museum (formerly Chicago Historical Society) were very helpful in finding both primary source (some unique originals) and scholarly sources for my research/writing.
I was recently offered a contract for my book (projected complete manuscript in May 2011) by Palgrave Macmillan, an important UK-US
publisher of scholarly books. My book, The Paper War: Anglo-American Debates about the American Republic, 1800-1830, will be printed in the “Britain and the World Series,” recognition of the Anglo-American components of my work.
In addition, my paper, completed in 2010, ““This babe-in-arms”: Joseph de Maistre’s Critique of America,” will appear in Carolina Armenteros ed. Heir and Enemy of the Enlightenment: Joseph de Maistre and the Legacy of
Philosophie (Oxford: Voltaire Society at the University of Oxford, expected January 2011). I have also recently submitted a paper to a referred, academic journal on “Who Won the War of 1812?: A Historical/Cultural Reappraisal.”
