The AI upheaval is unique in its ability to metabolize any number of dread-inducing transformations. The university is becoming more corporate, more politically oppressive, and all but hostile to the ...

Since we began publishing in 2019, Contingent has published end-of-year lists of books and articles by non-tenure-track historians released in the past calendar year. To submit something for inclusion...

At the dawn of the 1960s, skateboarding burst onto the scene so quickly that parents and community leaders were unsure how to deal with the “craze.” While it began as a form of leisure for surfers whe...

The “High Tang” is the period long renowned as the golden age of Chinese poetry. This book is the first translation into any language of the only extant anthology compiled contemporaneously that was solely devoted to poetry composed during that period. It contains 230 poems by 24 different poets and was completed around 753, providing a rare contemporary view of what one well-informed reader considered the best verse of the age. The selections are of poems in various lengths, forms, and styles. The poets represented include most of those recognized since then as the greatest writers of the time, as well as those who seem largely forgotten now but who were in their own day held in equally high regard.

The discourse of travel, society, and nation in Republican China

Jeffrey Wasserstrom’s tribute to Lynn Pan, acclaimed author and chronicler of Shanghai, reflecting on her intellectual curiosity, literary legacy, and enduring influence on global Chinese diaspora stu...

"Women's Fist-ism" (女拳) is a derogatory Chinese internet term that weaponizes wordplay—replacing "rights" (权) with "fist" (拳) in "feminism"—to portray women's rights advocates as aggressive man-haters...