Christopher P. Atwood

Christopher P. Atwood is a Professor of Mongolian and Chinese Frontier and Ethnic History and Department Chair of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania. He holds a PhD from Indiana University's Central Eurasian Studies Department. His research focuses on the interplay of culture, political power, and historiography in Mongol and Inner Asian contexts. Atwood's work spans topics such as Mongol nationalism, Yuan dynasty historiography, and the socio-economic history of nomadic societies.

Education: AB from Harvard University (1986), PhD from Indiana University (1994). He previously taught at Indiana University for two decades, serving in administrative roles. His affiliations include visiting scholar positions at institutions like the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton) and Peking University.

Research interests include environmental history (e.g., marmot-human relations), political dynamics (e.g., Mongol empires and comparative imperial formations), and literary studies (e.g., Mongolian poetry and textual canonization). He has authored works like the Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire and collaborates on projects such as the Sources of Mongolian Tradition.

Teaching includes courses on Inner Asian civilizations, the Mongol Empire, and the Secret History of the Mongols. He emphasizes interdisciplinary approaches, blending philology, environmental history, and cultural analysis to reconstruct nomadic and steppe societies.