Nancy S. Steinhardt

Nancy S. Steinhardt is Professor of East Asian Art and Curator of Chinese Art at the University of Pennsylvania where she has taught since 1982. She is author or co-author of Chinese Traditional Architecture (1984), Chinese Imperial City Planning (1990), Liao Architecture (1997), Chinese Architecture (2003), Reader in Traditional Chinese Culture (2005), Chinese Architecture and the Beaux-Arts (2011), Chinese Architecture in an Age of Turmoil, 200-600 (2014), and more than 70 scholarly articles.

Steinhardt's latest book is China's Early Mosques.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Her reply:

I read primarily academic books or books related to my academic interests. I read heavily in the area of Chinese art and architecture, and in Central Asian and East Asian art and architecture. Lately I have been reading biographies. I am currently reading Eduard Kogel's The Grand Documentation: Ernst Boerschmann and Chinese Religious Architecture (1906-1931), the biography a German architect who spent the early decades of the 20th century in China and drew and photographed numerous Chinese buildings that either no longer survive or no longer survive as they appeared nearly 100 years ago.

I have just read Mark Elliott's Emperor Qianlong: Son of Heaven, Man of the World, the life of the man who ruled for 60 years of the 18th century. I also am reading the travel account of Henri Ollone who traveled in China, Tibet, and Mongolia from 1906-1909. I choose these books for examples of how a scholar reaches or attempts to reach audiences beyond one's academic subfield, and I choose travel accounts for descriptions of the terrain, usually at much earlier times than the environment of the architecture I study today.

Learn more about China's Early Mosques at the Edinburgh University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: China's Early Mosques.

--Marshal Zeringue