History Graduate Students

Profile 

Brigid Vance’s research bridges the fields of history of medicine, intellectual, and cultural history in late imperial China. She is also interested in history of the book, material culture, and history of science, in particular the history of psychology and psychoanalysis.

Currently, Brigid is completing a dissertation titled “Textualizing Late Ming Dreams: Acts of Translation in the Encyclopedia Forest of Dreams,” which addresses the question of what dreams meant to literati in late imperial China, viewed through the lens of a 1636 dream encyclopedia. The focus of this research project is not dreams themselves, but the ways in which dreams were textually and visually articulated. Brigid's methodology combines history of the book (including edition comparison and content analysis) with both material and cultural history.

Brigid received her B.A. in Psychology from Carleton College and her M.A. in East Asian Studies from Stanford University. Brigid spent five and a half non-consecutive years living, working, and researching in China, Taiwan, and Japan.