I have lots of good news to report about my research project, The Rooted State:

• The first article to come out of this project, “Planting and its Discontents: or How Nomads Produced Spaces of Resistance in China’s Erstwhile Xikang Province,” has been published in issue 3 of Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities. Click here to read more about that.
• I have been offered a dissertation completion grant from the School of Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics at UIUC, which would allow me to focus entirely on writing during the 2017-18 academic year. I am still waiting to hear back about another grant, but having this option is wonderful.
• My paper proposal to the Agricultural History Society 2017 conference in June has been accepted, and I have also been invited to participate in their graduate workshop before the conference with a modest travel grant. I will be workshopping one of my dissertation chapters on experimental agriculture in Xikang Province.
• In March I completed and sent off two essays pending publication: a book chapter for an edited volume on Kham, and an article that will be part of a special issue on historical human-animal interactions in Asia if it passes peer review. I anticipate that both of these will be published by 2018, but possibly earlier.

For perspective, I’ve gotten about as many rejections, including a couple grants and at least one conference that I was excited about.  Oh well!