Smithsonian Journeys Experts

James Anderson is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. A historian of premodern China and Vietnam, Anderson’s first book was The Rebel Den of Nung Tri Cao: Loyalty and Identity Along the Sino-Vietnamese Frontier (University of Washington Press, 2007).  He is co-editor with Nola Cooke and Li Tana of The Tongking Gulf Through History (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011) and co-editor with John Whitmore of China's Encounters on the South and Southwest: Reforging the Fiery Frontier Over Two Millennia (Leiden: Brill, 2014, forthcoming).  His recent articles include “Distinguishing between China and Vietnam: three relational equilibriums in Sino-Vietnamese Relations” in Journal of East Asian Studies (2013).  Professor Anderson served as Executive Director of the academic consortium Southern Atlantic States Association for Asian and African Studies (SASASAAS) from 2007 to 2010. He has been active for many years in promoting international education and study abroad opportunities at his home university in North Carolina.