History Professor Receives Humboldt Research Award
History Professor Charles Sanft will spend the 2025-2026 academic year in Germany, focusing on his research into premodern Chinese manuscripts with the support of a Humboldt Research Award.
The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation makes up to 100 awards each year to honor internationally leading scholars from all disciplines for their work. Although the award does not come with specific responsibilities, Sanft said, “I will be an active member of the intellectual community at the University of Munich’s Institute of Sinology.”
“While I value and enjoy teaching, the focused time for research that the award will provide will help me finish off my book well and get some time to concentrate on my new project,” he said.
He received the foundation’s Carl Friedrich von Siemens Research Award, with a prize of 85,000 euros. “This award has been granted to you in recognition of your outstanding accomplishments in research and teaching to date,” the notification letter said.
Sanft is nearing completion of his third book, on a poetic sequence from 9th century China. “The poems give a unique picture of a place called Dunhuang and its region, showing what one person thought was important and worth remembering about it,” he said. “The poet records history and lore, vistas and water scenes, temples, a remarkable tree, and more.”
Then he plans to start a comparative study of premodern Chinese and Latin manuscript cultures.
Golden Age for Chinese History
Sanft took his first course on Chinese history as an undergraduate history major. “I was immediately drawn in and soon thereafter began to learn the Chinese language and just never stopped,” he said. “The further back in history I went, the more interesting it got. I ended up spending a long time studying classical Chinese and the sources and methods of Chinese history.”
Sanft’s book Literate Community in Early Imperial China received the American Historical Association’s James Henry Breasted Prize for the best book in English on history prior to 1000 CE.
“We are living in a golden age for the study of China’s long history, and the rich transmitted textual sources, manuscripts, and archaeological results provide immense resources for considering the past in many respects,” he said. “There is endless fascination in examining the many facets of China’s past in the many ways we have to do that, and I hope to pass at least some of that fascination on to students, as well.”
By Amy Beth Miller