Honors Director
Shana J. Brown is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. She has a BA summa cum laude from Amherst College, and a PhD in History from the University of California, Berkeley.
Dr. Brown is a historian of science and culture in Asia, particularly modern China. Her research and teaching bring the sciences and humanities in conversation, foregrounding the contributions of Asian intellectuals, especially women, to modern science and academic life.
As a predoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Dr. Brown began to research the values and practices of Asian visual culture and science, including how Chinese philosophical concepts regarding empiricism, humanism, and authenticity intersected with Western scientific practice. The result was her first book, Pastimes (University of Hawai’i Press, 2011), which focuses on the emergence of modern Chinese social science in the early 20th century, as well as other publications on modern Chinese intellectual and cultural life.
Her international reputation as a specialist in Asian science and culture, as well as fine art and visual media, has resulted in invitations to speak in France, the UK, Japan, China, and Germany, as well as the 2024 publication of Pastimes in Chinese by Zhejiang University Press.
Dr. Brown is now underway on research projects concerning women intellectuals in modern China and the technology and political uses of photography in wartime China. She has also begun a new project on the history of infectious disease in the context of US-China relations.
Email: shanab@hawaii.edu
Phone: (808) 956-5404