Historian Thomas Mullaney appointed Library of Congress fellow

Professor of Chinese history Thomas Mullaney has been awarded a prominent fellowship at the Library of Congress. Beginning in the spring, Mullaney will be in residence at the John W. Kluge Center in Washington, D.C., as the 2020–21 Kluge Chair in Technology and Society.

During his fellowship, Mullaney will focus on three areas: asymmetries in global information and language technology; global futures of computing, new media and information technology; and globalizing computational humanities.

Mullaney also is a faculty fellow in the Science, Technology and Society program at Stanford, as well as director of undergraduate studies in the Department of History in the School of Humanities and Sciences.

His most recent book, The Chinese Typewriter: A History (MIT Press, 2017), is the first full-length history in any language of the creation of China’s modern information infrastructure. The book received the 2018 John K. Fairbank Prize, awarded by the American Historical Association to honor the best book in East Asian history after 1800.

Mullaney said the appointment came as “a wonderful shock” and that he is eager to be able to do research within the “unparalleled” collection housed at the Library of Congress.

“Another key element of the chair, which I’m particularly excited about, is to sit down and converse with members of Congress who care about and think about the types of issues outlined in my research,” he said.

Mullaney, who grew up in Maryland and earned his BA and MA degrees from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, said being at the Library of Congress will feel like a homecoming.