Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica

Books

1. Family and Empire: The Fernández de Córdoba and the Spanish Realm (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).

Journal Articles

1. Yuen-Gen Liang (first author) with Barbara Fuchs, “Introduction: A Forgotten Empire: The Early Modern Spanish-North African Borderlands,” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 12, no. 3 (September 2011): 261-271.
2. Yuen-Gen Liang (first author), with Camilo Gómez-Rivas, Andrew Devereux, and Abigail Krasner Balbale, “Unity and Disunity Across the Strait of Gibraltar,” Spanning the Strait: Studies in Unity in the Western Mediterranean, a special issue of Medieval Encounters 19, no. 1-2 (2013): 1-40.
3. “Hidden Subjectivities in Objective Measures: Spanish Perceptions of Geographic Space in North Africa,” Pedralbes: Revista d’Història Moderna no. 40 (2020): 185-208, published in February 2021.
4. “Spanish North African Enclaves and Urban Networks in the Western Mediterranean in the Early Sixteenth Century,” CHEIRON: Materiali e strumenti di aggiornamento storiografico no. 1 (Jan 2021): 118-147.

Book Chapters

1. Yuen-Gen Liang (co-author) with Jarbel Rodriguez, “Authority and Spectacle: Teofilo F. Ruiz and the Study of Medieval and Early Modern Europe,” in Authority and Spectacle in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of Teofilo Ruiz (London: Routledge, Feb 2017).
2. “History, Historians, and the Production of Societies in the Past and Future,” in Ann Blair and Nicholas Popper, eds., New Horizons for Early Modern Europe Scholarship (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021), pp. 183-200. 

Conference Papers

1. “Family Identity and Empire: The Fernández de Córdoba in Navarre and Oran,” Mediterranean Studies Conference, Budapest, May 28-31, 2003.
2. “The First Count of Alcaudete, Cordovan Lord and Itinerant Imperial Administrator,” Society for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies Conference, Madrid, July 2-5, 2003.
3. “Local Roots and Imperial Ambitions: Martín de Córdoba y de Velasco and the Emperor Charles V,” Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, Pittsburgh, October 28-31, 2003.
4. “Family Structure, Identity, and Networks in the Construction of the Spanish Empire: The Fernández de Córdoba Lineage (1506-1534),” Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, New York City, March 25-27, 2004.
5. “Identifying a Service Nobility in Early Spanish Empire 1480-1520,” The Society for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies Conference, Miami, April 19-22, 2007.
6. “A Culture and A Distance Apart: The Experience of Human and Physical Space in the Spanish and Ottoman Empires,” American Institute for Maghrib Studies Conference, Oran (Algeria), June 2-5, 2007.
7. “A Family’s Role in Spanish Territorial Cohesion: The Fernández de Córdoba and the Formation of the Empire,” American Historical Association Annual Meeting, Washington D.C., January 3-6, 2008.
8. “The Evaluation of 'Experience' and 'Qualification' in the Administration of the Nascent Spanish Empire,” New England Renaissance Conference, Boston University, October 30-31, 2009.
9. “Subjective Experiences of Physical Geography in the Local Mediterranean: Oran on the Spanish-Ottoman Borderland,” Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, Venice, April 8-10, 2010.
10. “Property, foundations, and the formation of familial identity in Spain's transition from local society to empire: Evidence of the Fernández de Córdoba clan,” European Social Science History Conference, Ghent, April 13-16, 2010.
11. “Narrating the Parallel Histories of Western Europe and the Middle East, 400-1000: An Experimental Approach,” National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute “Cultural Hybridities in the Medieval Mediterranean,” Barcelona, July 29, 2010.
12. “From Ideological Frontiers to Boundaries of the Body and Territory: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Iberian World,” American Historical Association Annual Meeting, Boston, January 6-9, 2011 (main program).
13. “Spanish North Africa: An Arena of Aristocratic Action,” Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies Annual Meeting, Lisbon, June 30-July 3, 2011.
14. “A Nascent Empire and the Biological and Social Reproduction of Families: Spanish Imperial Administration as Lineage Networks,” Social Science History Association Annual Meeting, Boston, November 17-20, 2011.
15. “Andalusian Families and the Renewal of Ties to the Islamic World in the Late Middle Ages,” American Historical Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, January 4-6, 2012 (main program).
16. “A Family Reunion in the Spanish Occupation of Navarre,” Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., March 22-24, 2012.
17. “A Course, an Exhibition, and Two Conferences: Experiential Undergraduate Education and Building a Constituency for History,” American Historical Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, January 3-6, 2013 (main program and co-sponsored by the Renaissance Society of America).
18. “Authority in Specatcle in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: The Scholarship of Teofilo F. Ruiz,” American Historical Association Annual Meeting, New York City, January 2-5, 2015 (accepted into the main program and co-sponsored by the American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain and the Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies).
19. “Emotion and Analysis of Mediterranean Geography: Spanish Experiences in Sixteenth-Century Algeria,” Transnational Imaginaries: Mediterranean Past and Presence, Institute for Mediterranean Studies, Busan University of Foreign Studies, South Korea, January 27-28, 2016.
20. “Ethnogenesis: Parallels in the Formation of Islam and the West,” Medieval Association of the Pacific, University of California, Davis, March 31-April 2, 2016.
21. “How to Make Mediterranean Studies Useful outside the Mediterranean: The View from East Asia,” Religion, Politics, and Identity, The Mediterranean Seminar Spring 2016 Workshop, California State University, Fresno, April 8-9, 2016.
22. “Subjective Geographies in Spanish Encounters with North Africa, 1492-1558,” Iberia, the Mediterranean, and the World in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Periods, Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, October 11-13, 2018.
23. “The Sensory Perception of Violence in the Sixteenth Century Mediterranean: Typology and Ambiguities in Spanish-North African Relations,” Religion, Violence, and Multiculturalism: An Interdisciplinary Inquiry, National Cheng Kung University, November 30-December 1, 2018.
24. “Migrations and Transmissions: Mediterranean Studies in East Asia,” Asian Federation of Mediterranean Studies Institutes II Conference, Center for Islamic Area Studies, Kyoto University, December 22-23, 2018.
25. “Decontextualization in the Middle Sea: Sense of Dislocation, Bewilderment, and Immediacy,” keynote speech at 12th Biennial Conference of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, University of Sydney, February 5-8, 2019.
26. “Spanish Encounters with the Islamic World: The Age of Exploration in North Africa,” Western Learning and China Research Group (西學與中國研究群), Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, February 13, 2020. 
27. “Leonardo Turriano’s Descripcion de las plaças de Oran i Mazalqvivir: Engineering drawings of fortifications in North Africa,”Material Culture and Community Formation: Experience of Objects and Sensory Perception (「物質文化與社群形塑：感官知覺下的物質經驗」實驗工作坊), co-sponsored by the Institute of History and Philology (Academia Sinica), Institute of Modern History (Academia Sinica), and National Dong Hwa University, Hualien, June 22-28, 2020.
28. “Spanish fortress drawings and urban images of the void in early modern North Africa,” Material Culture and Community Formation: Experience of Objects and Sensory Perception (「物質文化與社群形塑：感官知覺下的物質經驗」實驗工作坊), co-sponsored by the Institute of History and Philology (Academia Sinica), Institute of Modern History (Academia Sinica), and National Dong Hwa University, Hualien, June 22-28, 2020.
29. “Julio Banfi’s ‘City of Tunis in Barbary, 1662’: A cityscape of signs and blankness,”Many Middles: Mediterranean and Middle Eastern Studies Collaboration in Taiwan, Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, November 28, 2020.
30. “Mediterranean Monotheism: A Perspective from East Asian Polytheisms,”Many Middles: Mediterranean and Middle Eastern Studies Collaboration in Taiwan (「台灣在地中海與中東研究上的合作研討會」), Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, November 28, 2020.
31. “Necessary Changes: Structural Support for the Development of Mediterranean-Middle Eastern Studies,”Many Middles: Mediterranean and Middle Eastern Studies Collaboration in Taiwan (「台灣在地中海與中東研究上的合作研討會」), Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, November 28, 2020.
32. “Questioning Assumptions and Received Notions through Knowledge of Mediterranean History,”Many Middles: Mediterranean and Middle Eastern Studies Collaboration in Taiwan (「台灣在地中海與中東研究上的合作研討會」), Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, November 28, 2020.
33. “Silence, maps, and European conceptions of northern Africa in the late medieval and early modern periods,” 中央研究院歷史語言研究所「110年度第八次學術講論會」, Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, April 26, 2021.
34. “Tunis: Renaissance Portrayals of an Islamic City,” Civilizational Exchange in the Central Mediterranean and Renaissance, Busan University of Foreign Studies, October 1-2, 2021.
35. “North African Fortresses and the Control of Mobility in the Early Modern Period,” Cultures of Travel: Tourism, Pilgrimage, Migration – The XV International Conference of the Taiwan Association of Classical, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, October 22-23, 2021.
36. “The ‘blank spaces’ of fortress plans and depictions of the Spanish-northern African frontier,” Sacred Space(s), The Mediterranean Seminar Winter 2022 Workshop, California State University, Fresno, February 11-12, 2022.
37. “Perception-altering silence: European mapping of northern Africa in the sixteenth century,” Sensoria of al-Andalus and the Western Mediterranean, Spain-North Africa Project, University of California, Santa Cruz, April 1-2, 2022.
38. “European cartography of northern Africa in the Age of Exploration: Expansion of mobility and perceptions of the western Mediterranean,” An Aqueous Bridge: People and Objects in Motion in the Western Mediterranean from the Medieval to the Modern Eras, Co-conference of the American Institute for Maghrib Studies, Spain-North Africa Project, and Council of American Overseas Research Centers, Tangier American Legation, Morocco, July 25-26, 2022.
39. “If Walls Could Talk: Fortress Plans and the Construction of Contested Space in Sixteenth-Century Tunis,” 中央研究院歷史語言研究所世界史研究室討論會, December 21, 2022.
40. “The creation, construction, and contestation of space in sixteenth-century Spanish Tunis,” 中央研究院歷史語言研究所「112年度第一次學術講論會」, Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, January 9, 2023.
41. “Northern Africa as Interlocutor between Old and New Worlds in the Atlantic Age,” From Mediterranean to Atlantic World, Mediterranean Seminar’s Winter 2023 Workshop, University of Miami/Florida International University (Miami, Florida), February 3-4, 2023.
42. “The subjectivity of the line: Invisible meanings of early modern European fortress plans,” 中央研究院歷史語言研究所基礎讀書會, Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, September 25, 2023.
43. “The construction of Mediterranean space and objects from the viewpoint of a Daoist-Buddhist ritual,” The Mediterranean Seminar 2023 Fall Workshop on Mediterranean Studies Present & Future: The ‘California School’ Twenty Years On, University of California, Santa Cruz, United States, November 3-4, 2023.
44. “European notions of northwest Africa and its centrality in-between time and space in the early modern globalizing world,” Mediterranean Seminar Winter 2024 Workshop on Intermediaries, Middle Grounds, Middle Sea, University of California, Los Angeles, United States, February 9-10, 2024.
45. “The Conquest of Space and the Redesign of Spanish Tunis (1573-1574),” Asian Federation of Mediterranean Studies Institutes, IV Biennial International Conference on Spaces and Familiarity, Spaces of Difference in the Mediterranean, Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, March 18-19, 2024.
46. “The 1573 Fortress Plan of Spanish Tunis: A Method for the Analysis of Blank Space,” 30th International Conference on the History of Cartography on Confluences-Interdisciplinarity and Challenges in the History of Cartography, Université de Lyon III Jean Moulin, Lyon, France, July 1-5, 2024.
47. “Visualizing the Invisible: Blank Spaces in Architectural Plans and the Construction of a Muslim-Christian Borderland in Sixteenth-Century Spanish Tunis,” 「近代之前的要塞與城堡工作坊」, Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, October 23, 2024.
48. “El poder del silencio en los planos arquitectónicos que construyeron una frontera Habsburgo-Tunecino en 1573-1574,” Universidad de La Laguna, Seminario de investigación del grupo Latino-Arabica, October 24-25, 2024.
49. “Perspective in Visual and Textual Representations of Northwest Africa: Ichnography, Beaches, and Blankness in European-Indigenous Encounters,” 中央研究院歷史語言研究所「114年度第十一次學術講論會」, Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, June 23, 2025.

Editorial Experience

1. Yuen-Gen Liang (co-editor) with Barbara Fuchs, A Forgotten Empire: The Early Modern Spanish-North African Borderlands, a special issue of the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 12, no. 3 (September 2011).
2. Yuen-Gen Liang (co-editor by invitation), with Camilo Gómez-Rivas, Andrew Devereux, and Abigail Krasner Balbale, Spanning the Strait: Studies in Unity in the Western Mediterranean, a special issue of Medieval Encounters (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill) 19, no. 1-2 (2013).
3. Yuen-Gen Liang (co-editor) with Jarbel Rodriguez, Authority and Spectacle in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of Teofilo F. Ruiz (London: Routledge, February 2017).

Other Writings

1. Yuen-Gen Liang (first author), with Touba Ghadessi, “The Interdisciplinary Humanities: A Platform for Experiential Learning of Workplace Skills,” Perspectives on History 51, no. 4 (April 2013).
2. 〈推薦序〉，收入尤金‧羅根（Eugene Rogan）著，《阿拉伯人五百年史》（台北：貓頭鷹出版社，2019.5）。
3. 〈伊斯蘭西班：歐洲穆斯林富含生命力的歷史（推薦序）〉，收入卡洛斯（Brian A. Catlos）著，《十字架上的新月：伊斯蘭統治下的西班牙711-1614》（台北：貓頭鷹出版社，2019.12）。
4. 〈獨角獸和羅針圖，巨龍和比例尺：從經典的波特蘭海圖解讀新的想像世界〉，「歷史學柑仔店」網站，2021.11.12。

Book Reviews

1. “Book review of Carina Johnson, Cultural Hierarchy in Sixteenth-Century Europe: The Ottomans and Mexicans,” Journal of World History 24, no. 3 (September 2013).
2. “Book review of Thomas Devaney, Enemies in the Plaza: Urban Spectacle and the End of Spanish Frontier Culture, 1460-1492,” Renaissance Quarterly 63, no. 9 (Fall 2016).
3. “Book review of Jean Dangler, Edging toward Iberia,” The Mediterranean Seminar Review (July 2021).
4. “Book review of Jose Escribano-Páez, Juan Rena and the Frontiers of Spanish Empire, 1500-1540,” The Mediterranean Seminar Review (September 2021).
5. “Book review of Sasha D. Pack, The Deepest Border: The Strait of Gibraltar and the Making of the Modern Hispano-African Borderland (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019),” The Journal of Modern History 96, no. 1 (March 2024), pp. 230-232.

Education：
Ph.D., Princeton University, USA (2005)
M.A., Princeton University, USA (1999)
B.A., University of California, Berkeley, USA (1995)

Current Positions：
2018.6.29- , Associate Research Fellow, Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica
2018.7- , Adiunct Associate Professor, Department of History, National Taiwan University

Founder and 2010-2026 President, Spain-North Africa Project [http://www.spainnorthafricaproject.org/] (2010- ) 
Co-Founder and 2012-2013 Co-Director, Wheaton Institute for the Interdisciplinary Humanities [https://wheatoncollege.edu/academics/special-projects-initiatives/wiih/] (2012- )
Founding Member, Editorial Board, The Medieval Globe journal [https://www.arc-humanities.org/journals/the-medieval-globe/] (2012- )
Co-President, New England Renaissance Conference (2013-2018) 
Co-Founder and 2023-2024 President, Asian Federation of Mediterranean Studies Institutes (2014-2024)
Program Coordinator in Asia, The Mediterranean Seminar [https://www.mediterraneanseminar.org/] (2014- )
Co-Covener, Many Middles Writing Group (2022- ) 

Main Previous Positions：
2016.2-2018.6, Associate Professor, Department of History, National Taiwan University
2014.1.21-2015.1.31, Visiting Associate Professor, Department of History, National Taiwan University
2012.7-2016.1, Associate Professor, Wheaton College MA, USA
2005.6-2012.6, Assistant Professor, Wheaton College MA, USA

1. Research fellowship, Käte Hamburger Research Centre, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany, September 2025-August 2026.
2. John Carter Brown Library, Center for New World Contemporary Studies, short-term fellowship, January-April 2023.
3. Newberry Library, The Arthur and Janet Holzheimer Fellowship in the History of Cartography, short-term fellowship, May 2023.
4. Invited plenary lecture, “Drawing blanks: Cartographic Conceptions of northern Africa in the motion of bodies, networks, and knowledge from 1400-1500s,” CMRS Center for Early Global Studies-American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain Symposium on “The Western Mediterranean and the Global Middle Ages,” University of California, Los Angeles, United States, October 21-22, 2023.
5. Invited inaugural lecture, “Architectural conceptualizations of a Mediterranean borderland: The blank spaces of Spanish Tunis, 1573-1574,” Nadwa Seminar, Tunisia, Mediterranean, and Beyond, Tunis, Tunisia, December 7, 2023.
6. Getty Research Institute Library Grant, short-term fellowship, November 2024.
7. University of California, Los Angeles, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Kanner Fellowship in British Studies, short-term fellowship January-April 2025.
8. Folger Shakespeare Library, Short-Term Fellowship, Washington, D.C., April-May 2025.
9. Maclean Collection Map Fellow, Chicago, USA, May-June 2025.
10. Käte Hamburger Research Centre, Long-Term Fellowship, Ludwig-Maximilians Universität Munich, Germany, September 2025-August 2026.