Richard J. Smith

Richard J. Smith is George and Nancy Rupp Professor of Humanities emeritus at Rice University in Houston, Texas. A specialist in modern Chinese history and traditional Chinese culture, with a strong interest in transnational, global and comparative studies, Smith has won twelve teaching awards while at Rice, including the Piper Professorship (1987), the George R. Brown Certificate of Highest Merit (1992), the Sarofim Distinguished Teaching Professorship (1994), the Nicholas Salgo Distinguished Teaching Award (1996), and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching "Texas Professor of the Year" Award (1998). Smith's books include Mercenaries and Mandarins: The Ever-Victorious Army in Nineteenth Century China (1978); Traditional Chinese Culture: A Brief Introduction (1978); Fortune-tellers and Philosophers: Divination in Traditional Chinese Society (1991); Chinese Almanacs (1992); Chinese Maps: Images of "All Under Heaven" (1996); The I Ching: A Biography (2012), Mapping China and Managing the World Culture, Cartography and Cosmology in Late Imperial Times (2013), The Qing Dynasty and Traditional Chinese Culture (2015); and Fathoming the Cosmos and Ordering the World: The Yijing (I Ching or Book of Changes) and Its Evolution in China (2008; revised edition 2017). He has also co-edited or co-authored nine volumes: Chinese Walled Cities (1979); Entering China's Service (1986); Robert Hart and China's Early Modernization (1991); Cosmology, Ontology, and Human Efficacy: Essays in Chinese Thought (1993); H. B. Morse, Customs Commissioner and Historian of China (1995); Different Worlds of Discourse: Transformations of Gender and Genre in Late Qing and Early Republican China (2008); Rethinking the Sinosphere: Poetics, Aesthetics, and Identity Formation (2020), Reexamining the Sinosphere: Cultural Transmissions and Transformations in East Asia (2020); and A Companion to Richard Berengarten’s Changing (forthcoming 2022). Smith is presently working on several articles and book chapters, as well as two books: (1) Magic Matters: Science and Medicine in Chinese Popular Culture 1600–1800; and (2) China: The Land of Ritual and Right Behavior. Born in Sacramento, California in 1944, Smith had a brief flirtation with professional baseball before coming to his senses. He has been married to the remarkable Alice (Lisa) Smith since 1967, and they have a delightful and talented son named Tyler.