My name is Dan Knorr; I am a PhD candidate in History at the University of Chicago. My research specialty is late imperial and modern Chinese history, and my dissertation is about the relationship between the state and local practices and subjectivities in Jinan, Shandong from the eighteenth century to the early twentieth century. In other words, I research how the status of a particular city in North China as a major political center affected the way local people lived and defined themselves with reference to this place.

I expect to be finished with my dissertation…some time. This blog is about my journey through the mysterious process of researching and writing a dissertation and discovering what being a professional historian entails. You might want to check out my first post, which explains the title and more about the purpose of this blog. To learn more about me, you can take a look at my personal website.

The views presented in this blog are my own, not those of the University of Chicago, the U.S. government, etc.