Mark P. McNicholas, Ph.D.

Mark McNicholas majored in East Asian Studies at Penn State and earned his Ph.D in Chinese history at the University of California at Berkeley. His research uses criminal case records to study encounters between common people and the state in imperial China. His first book, Forgery and Impersonation in Imperial China, explores usurpations of official authority in everyday settings. Currently he is working on provincial scholars who had the nerve to write the emperor with advice on good government. Dr. McNicholas teaches East Asian (China, Japan, and Korea) and world history surveys, and upper-level courses including Crime and Punishment in East Asian History, Women in Asian History, Asian History through Film, Early China, Modern China, and China’s Last Empire.