Event

Papers are circulated in advance. For copies, please contact the McNeil Center office. 

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Yiyun Huang is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His scholarship looks at the cultural ties between late imperial China and colonial North America. Specifically, he examines how and why the idea of tea’s healing powers transferred from China via Europe to British North America. He argues that it was the faith in tea’s medicinal efficacy that created a constant demand for this drink throughout the colonial era, which persisted even during and after political upheavals like the Boston Tea Party. He has traveled to archives and libraries in China and North America to collect Chinese- and European- language sources. He is blessed to have received support from the Library Company of Philadelphia, American Historical Association, American Antiquarian Society, Massachusetts Historical Society, New England Regional Fellowship Consortium, and the Omohundro Institute (OI). Currently, he is an Albert M. Greenfield Foundation dissertation fellow at the Library Company.