Visiting Professor
Email:
zhijun.ren@wisc.edu
Office:
Office 404, ZIBS Building, International Campus, Zhejiang University
Zhijun REN
Biography
Degrees
Expertise
Publications
Courses
Zhijun Ren’s research focuses on Sino-Korean diplomacy conducted through the tributary system. In particular, his project seeks to reconstruct early modern Sino-Korean relations through unconventional sources – gossip, hearsays, trivialities, and anecdotes. He has published articles, translations, and book reviews in English and Chinese on Sino-Korean relations, Korean travelogues, and Chinese intellectual history. Between 2017 and 2024, he worked as a visiting scholar at Zhejiang University teaching the course of History of Chinese Civilization.
• Ph.D., History, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Dissertation Title: “Envisioning the Early Modern Empire: Travel and Writing in Sino-Korean Relations.”
• M.A., History, University of Ottawa, 2012.
Thesis title: “The Tributary System and the Meaning of East Asia in Late Qing China.”
• Honours B.A., History, University of Ottawa, 2010.
Sino-Korean relations, Korean travelogues, and Chinese intellectual history
1. Ren, Zhijun. “Rethinking Yŏnhaengnok as Paralleling Narrative: From a Withered Tree to the Qing Imperial Narrative.” Acta Koreana. Vol. 23, No. 2, December 2020: 49–78.
2. Ren, Zhijun. “Feel the Elephant, Displaying the Empire: Animals and the Imagination of the Qing Empire in Yŏnhaengrok.” Under review with Late Imperial China.
3. Ren, Zhijun. “zai tianxiazhixu zhong xunzhao chaoxian wangchao.” Gan Chunsong and An Lezheed. Rethink the Tianxia System: In Search of a New World Order, 259-276. Hong Kong: City Univeristy of Hong Kong Press, 2023.
History of Chinese Civilization
