I was raised in Tainan, Taiwan for the first 9 years of my life, then relocated to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada with my family in February 1993.
While in Vancouver, I finished my elementary school at the Shaughnessy Elementary School, attended Vancouver College for grades 7 and 8, and graduated in May 2001 from St. George's School, a private all-boys university preparatory school.
From the sixth grade onward--throughout high school and college--I have learned to play the piano and the flute, to compose various genres of music, and to sing classical music. Roughly since elementary school, I have also followed and continue to follow contemporary trends in Chinese popular music very religiously. Having learned to appreciate, rather than being always narrow-mindedly critical of, musical arts, I share a similar insight for life in general. Needless to say, I'd be a musician, or at least a musicologist, if I have not chosen to purse an academic career in the social sciences. In 2007, I decided to pick up my interest in musical composition again, something I've left behind since high school. In January 2008, I rewarded myself with the new Yamaha flute model, YFL-584, hoping to find my way back to some serious flute playing in addition to being an amateur pianist. More about me and my world of music can be found under the MUSIC section.
In May 2005, I received my B.S. in Biochemistry and B.A. in Psychology from the University of Southern California, where I also earned a minor certificate in Gender Studies and another certificate in Musical Studies with Emphasis on Piano Performance from the Thornton School of Music. In the same year, my name was added to the Wall of Scholars in USC's Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Library. In May 2006, I obtained an M.A. degree in Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences from Columbia University in the City of New York. I am currently pursuing my doctoral degree in the Department of History at Princeton University. My fields of study are the history of biology and medicine, the history of East Asian science and medicine, and the history of China since 1800. I passed my general exams on May 14, 2008, and received my incidental M.A. degree in History in September 2008. Under the tutelage of Benjamin Elman and Angela Creager, my dissertation tells a critical history of sex-alteration in modern China. Major influences on my thinking include Michel Foucault, Arnold Davidson, David Halperin, Paul Rabinow, Ian Hacking, Lorraine Daston, Bruno Latour, Prasenjit Duara, Dorothy Ko, James Hevia, Tani Barlow, Lydia Liu, and, most recently, the German theorist-historian Reinhart Koselleck. More about my academic journey can be found under the RESEARCH section.
Besides my academic interests, I obviously have a strong passion for culture and the arts, which I hope to be captured to the fullest extent possible in this personal web site. Visit the LITERATURE section to learn more about my relationship with literature in general; the ETC. section reflects on other aspects of my life that have yet to be mentioned in this brief biographical sketch, and includes useful external links.
HOWARD HSUEH-HAO CHIANG | 姜學豪