Guangchen Chen Publishes New Book!

Assistant Professor of Chinese Literature and Culture Dr. Guangchen Chen's new book Collecting Antiquity in Modern China: Artifacts and their Afterlives (University of Chicago Press, 2026) is available for download now via BibliOpen!

Chen's book provides a look at twentieth-century Chinese writers and intellectuals who used the material remains of the past to unsettle the present. 
In this book, Chen argues that discerning collectors used antiquities to upend dominant discourses on history and cultural memory in twentieth-century China. Examining four categories of ancient artifacts—“carving” (oracle bones), “rubbing” (imprints of inscriptions and books), “brushing” (calligraphy), and “weaving” (textiles and costumes)—Chen explains how their modern (re)emergences changed our understanding of the relationship between tradition and modernity, textuality and materiality, and the very meaning of “Chineseness.”