Assistant Professor
Departments of History and Asian Studies
University of Texas at Austin
Curriculum Vitae (HTML with hyperlinks) (PDF)
e-mail: rhart@mail.utexas.edu
office: GAR 3.216
office hours: Tues. and Wed., 2:00-3:30, and by appt.
office phone: (512) 475-7258
mailing address:
Department of History
University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station B7000
Austin, TX 78712-0220
I work in Chinese history and the history of science, specializing in the history of Chinese mathematics; my other research interests include early Chinese philosophy and contemporary critical theory. My current research includes the following projects:
Chinese Roots of Linear Algebra (Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming in 2010, 326 pp.) traces early developments in linear algebra. While linear algebra is one of the core courses in most university undergraduate mathematics curricula, no book-length history has been written on its early development. One reason is that this early history took place in China. In addition to tracing the development of “Gaussian elimination” in China, this manuscript presents original research demonstrating the early history of determinants in China. This project will contribute to our understanding of the history of an important branch of mathematics, and also present an important example of the non-Western sources of modern mathematics and science. I completed much of the research for this manuscript under an ACLS/SSRC/NEH International and Area Studies Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. More information on this research is available on the digital history website below.
Imagining Civilizations: China, the West, and Their First Encounter (completed book manuscript, 223 typeset pages).
Chinese Roots of Linear Algebra Digital History Website (http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rhart/algebra/): In order to help my technical research on the early history of Chinese linear algebra reach a broader audience, I am developing a digital history website to demonstrate the solutions to linear algebra problems in imperial China. (Note: this website is currently in its preliminary stages of development.)
Articles on critical theory: “Universals of Yesteryear: Hegel’s Modernity in an Age of Globalization” (2006), together three articles I am currently revising, “How Structuralism Became a Science: Lessons from Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics,” “What Was an Episteme? A Genealogical Critique of Foucault’s Archaeology,” and “Modernity by Contradiction: Habermas’s Paradoxical ‘Communicative Reason’ in Action.”
Before coming to the University of Texas, I was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Chicago, in the Fishbein Center for the History of Science. Previously I was a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. Before that I was an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor in the Program in History and Philosophy of Science, Stanford University. I have been a postdoctoral fellow at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Studies, Harvard University and the Center for Chinese Studies, UC Berkeley, and a visiting fellow in the Department of the History of Science, Harvard University. I received my Ph.D. from the Department of History, UCLA. I earned my M.S. from Stanford in mathematics and B.S. from MIT in mathematics. I have spent a total of six years teaching, studying and researching in China.
“Universals of Yesteryear: Hegel’s Modernity in an Age of Globalization,” in Global History, edited by A. G. Hopkins (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006), 66–97.
“Quantifying Ritual: Political Cosmology, Courtly Music, and Precision Mathematics in Seventeenth-Century China,” to be included in Hart, Imagining Civilizations: China, the West, and Their First Encounter.
“The Great Explanandum,” essay review of The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society, 1250–1600, by Alfred W. Crosby, American Historical Review 105, no. 2 (April 2000): 486–493.
“Translating the Untranslatable: From Copula to Incommensurable Worlds,” in Tokens of Exchange: The Problem of Translation in Global Circulations, edited by Lydia H. Liu (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), 45–73. Earlier version published as “Translating Worlds: Incommensurability and Problems of Existence in Seventeenth-Century China,”Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 7, no. 1 (spring 1999): 95–128. Reprinted in Han yi Ying lilun duben 汉译英理论读本 [Theoretical Reader on Translating Chinese into English], ed. Yu Shiyi 余石屹 (Beijing: Science Publications [Kexue chubanshe 科学出版社], 2008).
“Beyond Science and Civilization: A Post-Needham Critique,” East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine 16 (1999): 88–114. Earlier version published as “On the Problem of Chinese Science,” in The Science Studies Reader, edited by Mario Biagioli (New York: Routledge, 1999), 189–201. Translated into Chinese by Wan Yiji 万一己, in Zhongguo kexue yu kexue geming 中国科学与科学革命 [Chinese Science and Scientific Revolution], ed. Liu Dun 刘钝 and Wang Yangzong 王扬宗 (Shenyang: Liaoning jiaoyu chubanshe 辽宁教育出版社, 2002).
“Dui xiandaixing de shuangchong fouding queren: Habeimasi de chaoyan shili lilun de zixiang maodun” 對現代性的雙重否定確認：哈貝馬斯的超驗勢力理論的自相矛盾（上，下） [Modernity by Contradiction: Habermas’s Paradoxical Theory of Transcendental Power, Parts I and II, in Chinese]. Xueren 學人 [The scholars] 6 (1994): 425–43 and 8 (1995): 385–402.
I have presented over thirty lectures on my work at various scholarly forums. In addition, I have also organized or co-organized several academic conferences and seminar series, including the following:
“Disunity of Chinese Science” (University of Chicago, May 10–12, 2002);
“Rethinking Science and Civilization: The Ideologies, Disciplines, and Rhetorics of World History” (Stanford, May 21–23, 1999);
“Critical Studies: Writing Science” (Stanford University, 1998–1999);
“Intersecting Areas and Disciplines: Cultural Studies of Chinese Science, Technology and Medicine” (UC Berkeley, February 27–28, 1998).
“East Asia to 1800” (fall 2009, offered yearly).
“Cultural History of Late Imperial China” (fall 2009, previously offered in 2008).
“Traditional China” (spring 2010, offered yearly).
“History of World Science to 1650” (fall 2010, offered yearly).
“History of Chinese Medicine” (spring 2008, previously offered spring 2006).
“Chinese Science, Technology, and Medicine” (fall 2006, previously offered at Stanford).
“Global Interconnections” (MDV 392M and MDV 685L, a team-taught course organized by Prof. Geraldine Heng, spring 2004)
“Imagined Unities: Nations, Civilizations, Modernities” (spring 2003; previously offered at Univ. of Chicago).
“Critical Studies: The Disunity of Language, Science, and Culture” (spring 2002; previously offered at Stanford and Univ. of Chicago).
“Cultural History of Ming China” (spring 2002).
“An Introduction to Sources in the History of East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine” (Univ. of Chicago, winter 2001).
“The Scientific Revolution: History and Counter-History” (Univ. of Chicago, spring 2001).
“Chinese Medicine: Interdisciplinary Studies” (Stanford, spring 1999).
“Cultural History of Chinese Science, Technology, and Medicine” (Stanford, winter 1998).