Dr. Miranda Brown

Biography

Miranda Brown is a cultural historian specializing in Chinese studies, with a focus on the intersections of culinary and medical practices in China. Her academic contributions include numerous articles on these subjects in both English and Chinese. She authored 'Politics of Mourning in Early China' (2007) and co-authored 'A Brief History of Chinese Civilization' (2012). Her published work, 'The Art of Medicine in Early China: Ancient Medieval Origins of a Modern Archive' (2015), investigates the formation of archives used by contemporary scholars to narrate the history of Chinese medicine. Brown emphasizes the importance of integrating premodern forms of Chinese knowledge production into current historiography, advocating for the reevaluation of non-Western, particularly pre-modern traditions. Currently, she is writing a book on the history of dairy in China during the twentieth century, a topic that has received little attention in the West. This research includes a detailed examination of cheeses from the Shanghai region during the sixteenth century, which was featured in Gastronomica: Journal of Critical Food Studies (2019). In the classroom, she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on various aspects of Asian history, and she actively mentors graduate students while leading advanced seminars that involve collaborative research projects.

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