David A. Pietz
Chávez 319E
Research Areas
David Pietz is Regents Professor of Modern Chinese History and the UNESCO Chair in Environmental History at the University of Arizona. His research focuses on environmental and technological history of modern China with a particular focus on water management.
Publications include The Yellow River: The Problem of Water in Modern China (Harvard; Cecil B. Curry Book Award), Engineering the State: The Huai River and Reconstruction in Nationalist China (Routledge), Water and Human Societies (co, editor, Palgrave), and State and Economy in Republican China (co-editor, Harvard Asia Center). His current project, “Death and Life on the Yangzi: Extinction, Conservation, and Environmental China in Modern China” is an exploration of the extinction of the Yangzi River Baiji dolphin that investigates patterns of continuity and change in notions of extinction, conservation, and biodiversity in China since 1949. His research has been supported by the Guggenheim Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, and the Institute for Advanced Studies (Princeton).
Committed to interdisciplinary area studies inquiry and teaching, he was Director of the Asia Program at Washington State University from 2005-2014, and Director of the UA Global Studies program from 2014-2019.