Overview
Mara Du’s research centers on the history of modern China (17th century – present), particularly on law, gender, and state-building.
Her first monograph, State and Family in China: Filial Piety and Its Modern Reform (Cambridge University Press, 2022), won the 2022 International Society for Chinese Law and History Biennial Book Prize. State and Family treats the state-sponsored parent-child hierarchy as the axis around which Chinese family and political power relations were constructed and maintained in imperial times. It examines the reform of filial piety law as a key to understanding the trajectory China undertook in the twentieth century. This book treats gender and intergenerational hierarchies as integrated "genderational order," which lay at the heart of the state’s instrumentalization of family relations for its legitimation and governance.
Mara's second book, China: From a Nationless State to a Nation Defined by State, is under contract with Columbia University Press. This book studies how China, Chinese nationalism, and Sino-foreign relations have been shaped by the multifaceted concept guo, which meant “dynastic state” in classical Chinese but which came to be used to represent the modern “nation-state” since the nineteenth century. A history of the entanglement between sovereign notions in China and the evolving global order, this book nonetheless highlights the sense of division and even antagonism resulting from the translation of a single key concept. By tracing the bifurcation between China and Chinese-ness along land and sea over the past century and a half, this book provides a case study examining how global interconnectedness and pre-existing local views intersected. The full manuscript is currently under review at Columbia University Press.
Mara is working on her third book, Twice a Stranger: China, The United States, and Trans-Pacific Travelers. This book follows the intertwined life journeys of seven women and men — Yung Wing (1828-1912), Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), Kin Yamei (1864-1934), Hu Shih (1891-1962), Wu Chien-Shiung (1912-1997), Anna Chen Chennault (1923-2018), and Yü Ying-shih (1930-2021) — who navigated their own “Chinese-ness” and “American-ness” while shaping the intimate estrangement between China and the United States as “twice a stranger” to one another.
At the same time, Mara is conducting preliminary research for her next major project, Social Darwinism in Asia: A History.
Research Focus
Late Imperial and Modern China; Law; Family and Gender; Empire- and Nation-Building; Sino-Foreign Relations; Chinese Overseas.
Publications
Refereed Journal Articles:
- “Toward a Nation Defined by State: Tattooed Loyalty and the Evolution of Yue Fei’s (1103-1142) Image from the Song to the Present,” Journal of Chinese History, 8.1 (2024), 23-48.
- “Unlimited Debt toward Father and Mother: Engendering State-Sponsored Generational Hierarchies in Late Imperial China,” Asia Major, 34.2 (2021), pp.93-125.
- “From Dynastic State to Imperial Nation: International Law, Diplomacy, and Conceptual Decentralization of China, 1860s-1900s,” Late Imperial China, 42.1 (2021), pp.177-220.
- “Bringing Chinese Law in Line with Western Standards? Problematizing ‘Chinese’ and ‘Western’ in the Late Qing Debate over the New Criminal Code,” Frontiers of History in China, 16.1 (2021), pp.39-72.
- “Policies and Counterstrategies: State-Sponsored Filiality and False Accusation in Qing China,” International Journal of Asian Studies, 16.2 (2019), pp.79-97.
- “Reforming Social Customs through Law: Dynamics and Discrepancies in the Nationalist Reform of the Adoptive Daughter-in-Law,” NAN NÜ: Men, Women and Gender in China 21.1 (2019), pp.76-106.
- “Sun Yat-sen as Guofu: Competition over Nationalist Party Orthodoxy in the Second Sino-Japanese War,” Modern China 45.2 (2019), pp.201-235.
- “Concubinage and Motherhood in Qing China (1644-1911): Ritual, Law, and Custodial Rights of Property,” Journal of Family History 42.2 (2017), pp.162-183.
- “Legal Justice in Eighteenth-Century Mongolia: Gender, Ethnicity, and Politics in the Manchu-Mongol Marriage Alliance,” Late Imperial China 37.2 (2016), pp.1-40.
Peer-Reviewed Short Commentaries:
- “Chinese Overseas, Southeast Asia, and Xi Jinping’s ‘Great Rejuvenation of the Pan-Chinese Nation,’” accepted by ISEAS Perspective, forthcoming.
In the news
- Cornell history scholars in residence at Institute for Advanced Study
- Chinese state used parent-child relationships to serve political goals
- Twenty Affinito-Stewart research grants awarded for the 2022-2023 academic year
- Einaudi awards fund global research and activities
- Center for Social Sciences names 2020-21 faculty fellows
HIST Courses - Spring 2025
- HIST 2001 : Supervised Reading - Undergraduate
- HIST 3002 : Supervised Research - Undergraduate
- HIST 8004 : Supervised Reading