Printing and Christianity in Late Ming China

The proposed PhD dissertation seeks to contribute to the study of communication circuit of texts between China and Europe by defining the process of interaction in late Ming China. It does so by putting the text and process of publication under scrutiny; here the text is not treated simply as a carrier of religious message, but rather as a unique reality in which people connected with each other and build a new communal identity founded on it. More precisely, the thesis will further investigate on the mechanism of textual production and identity building by addressing the following questions: 1. What kind of network was formed from the process of text production? In which ways did it relate to the external society? 2. How did members identify themselves within and without such a network? How was a textual community created? Specifically, the dissertation proposes to analyse these questions within the works of the late Ming converts such as Li Jiugong李九功 and Li Jiubiao李九標.