Evan Dawley is Associate Professor of History at Goucher College.

“RSEA fundamentally shaped my adult life. The training I received there, in language, history, and international relations led me to a Harvard-Yenching Fellowship at Fudan University and my work with WorldTeach in China, which in turn guided me back to pursue a Ph.D. in Chinese history from Harvard. That academic/non-profit combination allowed me to see the possibilities in taking a job with the U.S. State Department’s Office of the Historian, where I got to do some meaningful work on U.S. foreign relations history and the historical background of contemporary disputes in East Asia.”

“Ultimately, though, I wanted to be like the many professors from whom I learned so much, and happily landed at Goucher in the fall of 2013. I teach mostly early modern and modern history of China, Japan, and the whole region. Much of my research has focused on Taiwan, appearing as “Finding Meaning in Time and Space: Periodisation and Taiwan-Centred History,” International Journal of Taiwan Studies 1:2 (August 2018); and the long-delayed publication of what began as my dissertation, Becoming Taiwanese: Ethnogenesis in a Colonial City, 1880s-1950s (Harvard Asia Center Press, 2019). I have now shifted to work on the international construction of Chinese national identity by Chinese governments through their relations with and around Chinese communities around the globe. The roots of this project can be followed through my work on Taiwanese identities, my Ph.D. training, and back to the international history and international relations I studied in RSEA.”