Friday, September 04, 2009
Morris Bian, History, Winner of Creative Research and Scholarship Award, 2009
Morris Bian is an Associate Professor of History at Auburn University. Dr. Bian was born and raised in China, where he also received a BA in political science and a MA in history. He came to the US in the late 1980s to pursue advanced degrees in history. He earned a MA in United States History from Southern Illinois University in 1991 and a PhD in Chinese History from the University of Washington in 1998. In September 1998 he accepted a position as an assistant professor in the Department of History at Auburn University and has been teaching at AU ever since. His teaching responsibilities include courses in modern Chinese history, East Asian history, and world history at the undergraduate and graduate level. His research focuses on twentieth-century Chinese political, economic, and institutional history. He has published articles in prominent professional journals such as Modern China and Enterprise & Society. His first book, The Making of the State Enterprise System in Modern China: The Dynamics of Institutional Change (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005), was recognized by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title of the Year. In 2007 the International Convention of Asian Scholars named his book one of the top ten social science books in Asian studies, an award chosen from titles published around the world during the previous two years. His current research project explores the formation of China's regional state enterprise system during the twentieth-century.