Results for tag: History

Developing Mission: An Interview with Historian Joseph W. Ho

Missionaries who left the United States for China in the early 20th century packed for overseas assignments that lasted years at a time. They needed clothing, of course; Bibles and other religious texts were tools of the trade. If they had additional responsibilities—as medical missionaries, for example—they would need equipment to carry out that work. […]

Mark Elvin (1938-2023)

Mark Elvin, Emeritus Professor of Chinese History at the Australian National University and Emeritus Fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford, sadly passed away on 6 December 2023 in Oxford (England). Mark Elvin was an eminent scholar of Chinese history and the author of several ground-breaking works that changed the way in which China and its […]

Robert E. Entenmann, 1949-2024

Robert E. Entenmann, a longtime member of the Association for Asian Studies, died January 7, 2024 in Northfield Minnesota, having taught Chinese history at St. Olaf College for 36 years. A native of Seattle, Bob earned a B.A. in Chinese History from the University of Washington, an M.A. from Stanford, and a Ph.D. from Harvard […]

#AsiaNow Speaks with Ruth Mostern

Ruth Mostern is Professor of History and Director of the World History Center at the University of Pittsburgh and author of The Yellow River: A Natural and Unnatural History, published by Yale University Press and winner of the 2023 AAS pre-1900 Joseph Levenson Prize. To begin with, please tell us what your book is about. […]

In Memoriam: Emily Honig (1953-2023)

Emily Honig, a historian of China and retired University of California, Santa Cruz professor, passed away on October 14. She first visited the People’s Republic of China during the Cultural Revolution as part of a student delegation touring the country. Honig then embarked on graduate study in Chinese history at Stanford University and spent two […]

Generation and the Politics of Memory in China: Sociologist Bin Xu on Chairman Mao’s Children

Back in September 2017, I interviewed Emory University sociologist Bin Xu about his first book, The Politics of Compassion: The Sichuan Earthquake and Civic Engagement in China (Stanford University Press, 2017). At the end of our exchange, Xu told me about his next project—an examination of collective memory among the zhiqing, or 17 million “educated […]

Women in Japanese Studies

Excerpt: Women in Japanese Studies

Bringing together stories and reflections spanning more than thirty years, Women in Japanese Studies: Memoirs from a Trailblazing Generation will be released by AAS Publications in December 2023. Edited by Alisa Freedman (University of Oregon), the volume includes chapters from thirty-one scholars, who share stories of achievements, frustrations, and choices—both professional and personal. In Japan […]

AsiaNow Speaks with Tao Jiang

Tao Jiang is Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ, and the author of Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China, published by Oxford University Press, which received Honorable Mention of the 2023 Joseph Levenson Prize for distinguished scholarship on pre-1900 China. To begin with, please tell us what your […]

AsiaNow Speaks with Aurelia Campbell

Aurelia Campbell is Associate Professor at Boston College and author of What the Emperor Built: Architecture and Empire in the Early Ming, published by University of Washington Press and winner of the 2023 AAS Bei Shan Tang Monograph Prize. To begin with, please tell us what your book is about. My book is about the […]

Cover image of Foreign Banks and Global Finance in Modern China

Historian Ghassan Moazzin on Foreign Banks and Global Finance in Modern China

Solid, stately buildings line Shanghai’s waterfront Bund, their ornate facades standing in stark contrast to the sleek skyscrapers of Pudong across the Yangtze River. Today, Pudong is the city’s financial district, but a century ago the heart of Shanghai’s financial sector beat on the Bund. One by one, foreign banks arrived in the late 19th […]

Reproductive Realities in Modern China: An Interview with Sarah Mellors Rodriguez

Sarah Mellors Rodriguez is Assistant Professor of History at Missouri State University and author of Reproductive Realities in Modern China: Birth Control and Abortion, 1911-2021 (Cambridge University Press, 2023). Many readers will be familiar with the politics of reproduction in contemporary China, via media stories about the One Child Policy in effect from the late […]

Screenshot of the Association for Chinese Art History website

Introducing the Association for Chinese Art History

Scholars of Chinese art history now have a new home to share news, events, and find their communities! The Association for Chinese Art History (ACAH) is a newly-formed committee of AAS, associated with the East and Inner Asia Council (EIAC). It seeks to promote communication and community among scholars of Chinese art and architectural history […]

Cover image of Uncertainty in the Empire of Routine, by Maura Dykstra

Uncertainty in the Empire of Routine – An Interview with Maura Dykstra

As the Qing dynasty wrested control over the Chinese empire from Ming rulers in the mid-1600s, officials in Beijing needed information. Administering a state both geographically large and bureaucratically deep, the central government relied on reports from below to ascertain events outside the capital city and assess the performance of officials who operated beyond its […]

Cover of Americans in China: Encounters with the People's Republic, by Terry Lautz

Americans in China: Encounters with the People’s Republic — An Interview with Terry Lautz

When historian and lifetime AAS member Terry Lautz arrived in mainland China for the first time in December 1978, he visited a country that had been slowly mending ties with the United States after a rift of more than two decades. By the time he departed the mainland three weeks later, Sino-American relations had undergone […]

Cover of John Delury, Agents of Subversion

Agents of Subversion: A Q&A with Author John Delury

On March 12, 1973, John T. “Jack” Downey walked across the Lo Wu Bridge from mainland China into Hong Kong—a crossing more than two decades in the making. In November 1952, Downey had been a young CIA agent tasked with a covert mission near the border between China and Korea. Chinese forces, however, had prior […]

#AsiaNow Speaks with Anne Prescott

Anne Prescott is Director of the Five College Center for East Asian Studies in Massachusetts and one of four authors (the others are John Frank, Arlene Kowal, and Yurika Kurakata) of Walking the Tōkaidō: A Multi-Disciplinary Experience in History and Culture, an online curriculum created for the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia at the […]

Beyond the Book cover

Excerpt: Beyond the Book

AAS Publications is pleased to announce the newest volume in our Asia Past & Present monograph series. Beyond the Book: Unique and Rare Primary Sources for East Asian Studies Collected in North America is edited by Jidong Yang (Stanford University) and includes chapters from over twenty contributors, writing on nonbook sources such as “manuscripts, archival […]

In Memoriam: Chang Hao 張灝 (1937-2022)

Dr. Chang Hao, the renowned Sinologist and scholar devoted to the intellectual history of modern China, died April 21 at age 85 in Albany, California. Dr. Chang was born in 1937 in Xiamen, and after living in Chongqing and Nanjing he moved with his family to Taiwan in 1949. He studied with well-known China scholars […]