Jonathan Schlesinger is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Indiana University Bloomington, where he also directs the History Honors Program. He holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University (2012). As a historian of late imperial China, the Qing empire, and environmental history, Schlesinger's work investigates the nexus of empire, environment, market forces, and resource extraction in China's borderlands. Drawing on multilingual archives in Chinese, Manchu, and Mongolian, as well as material culture, his research highlights the global connections in China's environmental history, informed by fieldwork in the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, and Mongolia. His research interests include China and Inner Asia, environmental history, early modern empires, race and ethnicity, and commodities and consumption.

His acclaimed first book, A World Trimmed with Fur: Wild Things, Pristine Places, and the Natural Fringes of Qing Rule (Stanford University Press, 2017), analyzes the ecological transformations during the Qing commercial boom of 1750-1850, using case studies of fur, pearl, and mushroom trades to show how scarcity prompted the creation of protected natural zones. The volume earned the 2019 Joseph Levenson Pre-1900 Book Prize from the Association for Asian Studies. Key articles include "Rethinking Qing Manchuria's Prohibition Policies" (Journal of Chinese History 5.2, 2021), “Towards an Environmental Microhistory: Lessons from the Muwa Gisun” (Late Imperial China 39.2, 2018), “Rulers and Rascals: The Politics of Gold in Qing Mongolian History” (Central Asian Survey 29.3, 2010, with Mette High), and “Xinqingshi yu zhongguo huanjingshi qianyan” (Jiang-Han Luntan 5, 2014). Ongoing projects encompass 103 Words, a microhistory of five 1801 castaways on Jeju Island—including two likely enslaved Africans—whose 103-word dictionary underscores terms like “rhinoceros” and “ivory,” and The Ivory Archive, which employs historical texts, ivory artifacts, and biochemical provenance analysis to recount the environmental histories of elephants and cross-border ivory trade. Schlesinger teaches courses on China’s later empires, environmental problems in Chinese history, environmental history broadly, East Asia in world history, and capstone seminars. He is also adjunct faculty in Central Eurasian Studies.

Professional Email: joschles@iu.edu