Translating Early Modern China

Carla Nappi is a historical pataphysician whose research tends to focus on Chinese and Manchu texts in early modernity, and who holds the Andrew W. Mellon Chair in History at the University of Pittsburgh. From undergraduate training in paleobiology, Professor Nappi pursued an M.A. in History of Science and then a Ph.D. in Chinese history. Her first book, The Monkey and the Inkpot: Natural History and its Transformations in Early Modern China (Harvard, 2009), looked at problems of evidence and belief in Chinese natural history. Her two most recent books Metagestures (with Dominic Pettman, Punctum, 2019) and Uninvited (with Carrie Jenkins, McGill-Queens University Press, 2020) reflect a growing emphasis on collaborative work and on integrating short fiction and poetry into her practice. Her current work is preoccupied with insomniac temporality; with the relationship between DJ'ing, history, and translation; and with housekeeping as a magical practice.

• Preface: On History and Its OppositesIntroduction: On Cities and Their OppositesGathering1: Glossary (1578)2: Documents (1389/1608)3: Grammar (1678)4: Primer (1730)5: Poems (1848)DispersalBibliography

Illegible Cities is an important work of history, arguing against the temptation in Sinology to reduce pre-twentieth-century China to what occurred in one language alone