Ya Zuo 左娅

@zuoya.bsky.social

Historian, middle and late imperial China, cultural history, history of emotions, Associate Professor at UC Santa Barbara

Took my grad seminar to the UCLA rare book collection. I had requested every Tang and Song item available and seeing them all was deeply satisfying. We had on the table one Tang Dunhuang scroll, three Song Buddhist sutras, one Yuan sutra, along with some Ming and Qing books. Wonderful collection

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One challenge I find with discussion-based learning is each class inevitably has a handful of students who are less comfortable contributing verbally. The dialectical notebook, (aka, the "silent discussion”) is one way to guide them toward productive engagement. inquiryproject.org/2026/02/17/d...

Engaging Every Student with the Dialectical Notebook - Inquiry Project

One challenge I encounter with discussion-based learning is that each class inevitably has a handful (or more) of students who are less comfortable contributing verbally. My goal in supporting these s...

inquiryproject.org

Bowdoin president's message one Kidder Smith's passing. He was my predecessor as the China historian at Bowdoin. I never met him, but I’ve heard so much about him as a campus legend.

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Wrapped up my talks at Princeton and Rutgers. Had a great time catching up with old friends and teachers, and meeting new ones too. Took NJ Transit to and from the airport and landed on the old cars. They look exactly the same as 20 years ago! Felt like I was zapped right back into a time capsule…

With lovely Rutgers colleagues

I'm excited to return to New Jersey next week to give two talks respectively at Princeton and Rutgers. I'll be speaking about my recent work on Zhu Xi and his theory of emotions. I hadn't excepted a classical topic to spark so much joy of discovery, and I look forward to sharing that.

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My review of Xuelei Huang's Scents of China: A Modern History of Smell is out in the American Historical Review. This is the first monograph ever written on the history of olfaction in China studies. A pleasant read! academic.oup.com/ahr/article-...

Xuelei Huang. Scents of China: A Modern History of Smell.

Xuelei Huang’s Scents of China: A Modern History of Smell is a cultural history of smell in modern China. It delineates an “olfactory revolution” that link

academic.oup.com

My friend Chen Hao passed away a month ago. He was a historian of medicine and middle-period Chinese history. He would have turned 42 this July. I wrote this obituary for him. Though I’ve written it, I still don’t have the words for such grief. www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_f...

左娅︱悼陈昊_上海书评_澎湃新闻-The Paper

陈昊的突然离世,对我来说是一场时间彻底崩塌的事件。我们是在北大本科念书时结识的朋友,迄今已经相识二十余年。这二十年间,我们分别在世界的两头读完博士、入职高校、写

thepaper.cn

I gave a talk on male tears in premodern China as part of the Profs at the Pub series, held at the Third Window Brewery in Santa Barbara. First time for me to speak among beer barrels!

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