Program in Early Cultures

Tamara Chin works on comparative approaches to antiquity, with a focus on: Han dynasty and early Chinese texts; the Afro-Eurasian "Silk Road"; historical narrative and poetics; with broader interests in classical reception; and in economic, gender & sexuality, and race studies.

She received her BA from Harvard College in Classics and Literature and PhD from UC Berkeley in Comparative Literature (classical Chinese, Greek, Latin). Author of Savage Exchange: Han Imperialism, Chinese Literary Style, and the Economic Imagination (Harvard, 2014), she is currently completing The Silk Road Spirit and the Modern Human Sciences, 1870-1970, a multiregional and multidisciplinary account of the study of ancient contact during the century spanning New Imperialism and Cold War decolonization.