Cruz (Wenhao) Guan is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History. His dissertation focuses on the transformation of China from an empire to a modern nation-state from 1800 to 1937 based on the influences of cartography, modern education system, print culture, and Shanghai’s publishing industry. By adopting a multi-layered perspective and interdisciplinary approaches from geography, his study will suggest that the birth of a new Chinese nation-state as defined in maps was a complex interaction in which the different, sometimes even contradictory, understandings of emperors, state officials, non-state-educated elites, and ordinary people collided and mixed.

Cruz is interested in modern China’s print culture (especially the visual materials in different forms of publications), late imperial literati culture, the history of science and technology, and historical geography. He has presented his work at Association for Asian Studies (AAS) 2024 Annual Conference, AAS-in-Asia 2025 Annual Conference (Kathmandu, Nepal), various AAS regional conferences (including MCAA, SWCAS and NYCAS). He will also be presenting at the upcoming 2025 BACS (British Association for Chinese Studies) Annual Conference (Leicester, UK) and AHA (American Historical Association) Annual Conference (Chicago, IL).

Since 2021, Cruz has conducted several archival research trips in the U.S., China, and UK. His project has received both OSU internal travel/research grants (Office of International Affairs, International Research and Scholarship Grant and Phyllis Krumm Memorial International Scholarship; The Department of History, The Retrieving the American Past Award and The Tien-yi Li Prize; Mershon Center for International Security Studies, Graduate Research Grant) and external fundings (Association for Asian Affairs, East and Inner Asia Council Small Grants). He has also been awarded the History Department's Richard R. Duncan Fellowship in the academic year of 2025-26, a competitive nine-month academic fellowship providing full tuition, fees, and stipend support for dissertation-writing processes.

He contributed a 2009 Chinese Central Television (CCTV) adaptation of the traditional Chinese drama, “The Return of the Soul at The Peony Pavilion (2009),” to The Chinese Theater Collaborative/華語戲聚. https://chinesetheatercollaborative.org/ctc/the-return-of-the-soul-at-the-peony-pavilion---2009 

In October 2024, he published an article on Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspectives. https://origins.osu.edu/read/establishment-peoples-republic-china 

In addition to being a GTA at the Department of History, Cruz has taught two undergrad courses as an instructor-of-record for three semesters at OSU, including Hist. 2401: History of East Asia in the Pre-Modern Era (to 1800) and Hist. 2402: History of East Asia in the Modern Era, 1600 to 1990s. He also served as the member of the 2023-24 History Department Graduate Student Advisory Committee (GSAC) and worked with the History Department’s Undergraduate Teaching Committee (UTC) as the representative for GSAC.