Confucians and Confinement: Imprisoned Officials in Ming China (1368-1644)

Zhang’s Academy project, “Confucians and Confinement: Imprisoned Officials in Ming China (1368-1644),” is the first book-length study of the imprisoned officials and prison culture in pre-modern China. During the Ming period, an unusually high number of officials were imprisoned for job-related investigations or political reasons; both the incarcerated and those who took care of them left accounts of their experiences. Zhang considers the details of everyday prison life as well as the actions of their families, friends, and sympathizers. Examining thousands of cases of imprisonment in the Ming dynasty, her book treats the prison space as a fluid site to explore the entanglement of legal practice, bureaucratic management, political struggle, and personal negotiation. Drawing on the interdisciplinary scholarship of Prison Studies, Zhang takes a new approach to understanding the Chinese bureaucratic tradition by illustrating its social and cultural contexts. “Additionally, by situating imprisonment in the history of medicine, family, and material culture, the book will significantly enrich the comparative history of prisons by not only offering an in-depth study of a pre-modern Chinese case but also suggesting new ways to illuminate the nature and impact of incarceration in our own world,” she writes. In Berlin, Zhang plans to work with colleagues in early modern Chinese science and material culture at the Freie Universität, Staatsbibliothek, and Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.