Our Director, Prof. Hsiung Ping-chen, has been invited by the Department of American Studies, Brown University to give a public lecture on “The Discovery of American Ginseng: A Case Study in Historical Anthropology and Medical Humanities”. In this lecture, Prof. Hsiung uses the case of American Ginseng to show how new economic and pharmaceutical (even epistemological) possibilities were thrown open with the coming of the “maritime” age that move across borderlands and tested the frontiers of knowledge and frontiers of trade. She also explains that the case is chosen to help us reflect upon the novel, outlandish character that maritime/global history turns out to be in the longue durée of the unfolding of man-made records.