Research Interests

Centering on China's multi-faceted engagement with the outside world, Dr. Wang conducts original research in Chinese, English, French, German, and Japanese. Her book, The United States and China: A History from the Eighteenth Century to the Present (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013), has won the "Choice Outstanding Academic Titles 2013: Top 25 Book" award (out of nearly 7,000 books and across 54 fields) in the United States. Other acclaimed books that she single-authored include China's Unequal Treaties: Narrating National History (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005) and Managing God's Higher Learning: U.S.-China Cultural Encounter and Canton Christian College (Lingnan University), 1888-1952 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007). She edited Christianity as an Issue in the History of United States-China Relations (a special volume of the Journal of American-East Asian Relations, vol. 13, 2008), as well as Restructuring Governance in Contemporary Urban China: Perspectives on State and Society (the Journal of Contemporary China, vol. 20, no. 72, November 2011), and Chapter 6 (300 pages), "The United States, Asia, and the Pacific, 1815-1919," in The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Guide: An Annotated Bibliography of American Foreign Relations since 1600, Brill, 2017.

Her latest work includes: a review “The 1949 Divide: A Revisit” appeared in Oxford UP’s Diplomatic History 43, no. 2 (April 2019): 394-96; "Between Tribute and Unequal Treaties: How China Saw the Sea World in the Early Nineteenth Century," History: The Journal of Historical Association (Britain, A&HCI), 103, no. 355 (April 2018): 262-285; "Jindai huaqiao yu Zhongguo gaodeng jiaoyu," [近代华侨与中国高等教育公益事业 Modern Chinese diaspora and philanthropy in higher education], transl. by Shi Xiaoyun (史晓云), Jindai Zhongwai guanxishi yanjiu [Studies in modern Chinese foreign relations 近代中外关系史研究], vol. 7 (August 2017): 207-227, published in Beijing by Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe (Social Sciences Academy Press 社会科学文献出版社); "Xin shiqi yingwen shijie zhong de jindai zhongwai guanxishi yanjiu," [新时期英文世界中的近代中外关系史研究 Modern China in world affairs: A historiographical essay] Shehui kexue pingjia [社会科学评价] (Beijing, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) 10, no. 2 (June 2017): 65-75. Excerpt appeared in Zhongguo shehui kexue wenzhai [中国社会科学文摘], no. 10 (2017): 24-25; "US-China Economic Relations," in Andrew Tan, ed., A Handbook of US-China Relations (Surrey, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016, pp. 155-177); "The Unequal Treaties and the Treaty Ports," in Tim Wright, ed., Oxford Bibliographies in Chinese Studies, and "The 'Letter Should Not Beg': Chinese Diaspora and Philanthropy in Higher Education," in John Fitzgerald and Hon Ming Yip, eds., Philanthropy and the Chinese Diaspora on the Pacific Rim, 1850-1949.

She has just completed a book manuscript on Luoyang's World Heritage site, the Longmen Grottoes, in Chinese and global history.