Joshua Hill

Joshua Hill specializes in the study of modern China. Inspired by his experiences living in Ningbo, Zhejiang and Changsha, Hunan during the height of the “Reform and Opening Up” era, Hill’s research focuses on the introduction, circulation, and transformation of political ideas and attitudes in modern China. His first book, Voting as a Rite: A History of Elections in Modern China, explores how Chinese leaders and thinkers in the 19th and 20th centuries conceptualized the meaning of elections and understood the purpose of voting.

Joshua Hill teaches a variety of courses in Chinese history, East Asian history, and historical methodology.

Publications

• Voting as a Rite: A History of Elections in Modern China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2019).
• “Translator’s Foreword,” to English translation of Xu Qiyu, Fragile Rise: Grand Strategy and the Fate of Imperial Germany, 1871-1914 [Cuiruo de jueqi: dazhanlüe yu Deyizhi diguo de mingyun] (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2017).
• “Xuanmin jiaoyu: liansheng zizhi yundong yu Zhongguo xuanju fa de biange [Voter Education: Provincial Autonomy and the Transformation of Chinese Election Law, 1920-23],” in Minguo shiqi de falü, zhengzhi, yu shehui [Republican Era Law, Politics, and Society], Chinese translation by Zhao Yanjie, edited by Wen-hsin Yeh and Wang Chaoguang (Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2016).
• “Senkyo undō wa futōda!: 1912-13 nen senkyo e no hihan [Elections Based on Campaigning are Incompatible with the Truth: Rethinking Early Republican Elections],” in Chūgoku gikai hyakunen [A Hundred Years of China’s Parliament], Japanese translation by Ienaga Masaki, edited by Fukamachi Hideo (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 2015).
• "Seeking Talent at the Voting Booth: Elections and the Problem of Campaigning in the Late Qing and Early Republic," Twentieth-Century China 38.3 (October 2013), 213-29.
• "Voter Education: Provincial Autonomy and the Transformation of Chinese Election Law, 1920-23," Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review E-Journal 7 (June 2013), 5-29 and Print Journal 2.2 (November 2013), 307-34.