Yuan Yi is Assistant Professor of History at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec.
Her current book project, Machine and Knowledge: The Global Making of the Chinese Cotton Industry, 1890-1937, examines the mechanization of cotton spinning in China with emphasis on the transpacific circulation of spinning machines, cotton varieties, and technical experts. Drawing upon machine manuals, engineering journals, agricultural reports, and contracts between American machine firms and Chinese cotton mills, it shows how the Chinese addressed technological issues specific to American machines that failed to process short-staple Chinese cotton, through continued modification and repair of the foreign machines on the shop floor while replacing native cotton with American varieties in cotton fields. This project has been supported by the D. Kim Foundation for the History of Science and Technology in East Asia, the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, and the Harvard Business School. A portion of research on the modification of American spinning machinery on the Chinese shop floor has appeared in Technology and Culture, an earlier version of which was awarded the Samuel Eleazar and Rose Tartakow Levinson Prize by the Society for the History of Technology.
