Global Lives of Medicines: Materials, Markets, and Healing Practices across Asia

“Global Lives of Medicines” is a collective project on the cross-cultural exchange of medicines and the ways in which global trade networks and local healing practices are intertwined across Asia. Cheng will bring together specialists in medical humanities in historical and contemporary China, Japan, Korea, Central Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia to engage in discussion and collaborative research on the roles materiality and bodily experience play in the production and transmission of medical knowledge. Cheng argues that much of this research will challenge decades of emphasis on European expansion and related influences on trade networks.