Wang XiProfessor

  • Office: 304-G Leonard Hall
  • Phone: 724-357-2284
  • Email: wangxi@iup.edu

Education

  • PhD, Columbia (1993)

Academic Interests

  • 19th-century US political history
  • African American History
  • US Constitutional History
  • Civil War and Reconstruction

Profile

Professor Wang Xi specializes in the political history of the nineteenth-century United States and teaches courses on American Civil War and Reconstruction, African American history, US Constitutional History, and Liberal Studies courses. His seminars cover such topics as slavery, citizenship, suffrage, and American state- and nation-building.

He is the author of The Trial of Democracy: Black Suffrage and Northern Republicans, 1860-1910 (1997); Principles and Compromises: The Spirit and Practice of the American Constitution Expanded Edition* (2014, 7th reprint 2022); and Political Systems of the Western Countries* (co-authored, 2011). His edited books include:

  • Teaching History in America (2022, with Yao Ping)
  • Political Legacies of the Nineteenth Century United States* (2020, with Eric Foner)
  • Trans-Pacific Conversations: Doing History in a Global Age* (2017, with Xiao Hongsong)
  • Pathmakers: Conversations with Renowned Historians* (2015, with Lu Hanchao and Yao Ping)
  • Discovering History in America* (2010, with Yao Ping)

His research articles appear in academic journals in the United States and China, including the Cardozo Law Review, Chicago-Kent Law Review, Civil War History, Historical Research, and The Chinese Journal of American Studies

He has translated a number of books from English into Chinese, including Eric Foner's The Story of American Freedom (2002, 5th reprint 2018), Give Me Liberty: An American History (2010, 4th reprint 2023), Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (forthcoming in 2023). He served as the founding chief-editor of The Chinese Historical Review (2004–14), now published by Routledge. 

A native of China, Wang Xi has taught at Peking University, China, where he has held a Changjiang Professorship in the History Department and has trained a dozen PhD and MA students in US history.

 

*In Chinese