Christopher A. Reed (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley 1996;
C.Phil., University of California, Berkeley 1990; M.Phil., University
of Glasgow 1984; B.A., McGill University 1978) joined the faculty in
1997.
Professor Reed is a specialist in the history of modern China with particular focus on the period from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. His teaching focuses on the Qing, Republican, and People's Republic periods. In recent years, Professor Reed has led historically oriented summer study-tours to China that have been made up of OSU undergraduates and other interested parties.
Professor Reed's research concentrates on China's modern media, print culture, print capitalism, and print communism. His book Gutenberg in Shanghai: Chinese Print Capitalism, 1876-1937 (University of British Columbia Press and Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University, 2004; University of Hawaii and Hong Kong University presses, 2005) combines the history of technology, business, politics, and culture in the study of modernization in China's largest city.
Gutenberg in Shanghai won the 2003-05 ICAS Humanities Book Prize (co-sponsored by the US-based Association for Asian Studies, the European Alliance in Asian Studies, and Leiden University's [The Netherlands] International Institute for Asian Studies); for more information, please see this English-language article from the China Daily, this Chinese-language article from Sybook.com, or this reference from H-Asia. Gutenberg in Shanghai also received Honorable Mention in the DeLong Book Prize competition of the Society for the History of Authorship, Readership, and Publishing (SHARP) in 2005.
From 2004 to 2009, Professor Reed served as the editor of Twentieth-Century China, a leading international historical journal of modern and contemporary China. Since 2009, he has been a member of the journal's Editorial Board. He is also the Editorial Board member in charge of Asia for Book History, the international scholarly journal of SHARP.
Prior to joining the Ohio State faculty, Professor Reed served on the
faculties of the University of San Francisco, University of Oklahoma and Reed College (in fact, when he was there, he was the only Reed at Reed). The recipient
of three Fulbright awards among other research grants, Professor Reed has lived
in China and Taiwan for nearly five years. He has also worked and traveled
widely throughout Asia and Europe. Living in those places did not improve
his squash game at all, but that does not stop him from playing as frequently as possible.
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