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H-ASIA April 3, 2007 Chinese scholars and Chinese history [Ed. note: Drs. Yang and DuBois raise an important point for discussion, one that could perhaps apply also to other fields encompassed by H-ASIA, other disciplines than history, and other settings than the USA. Comparison of the China situation with the sorts of interactions between (say) historians of France or Germany in US universities and in French or German ones could also be germane. As the posters say, H-ASIA provides a unique forum in which to broach it. P.S. I formatted this to send to the list on March 27, but must have neglected to click the confirm button because it never appeared. My apologies to the posters for the delay. RD] ****************************************************************** From: "Thomas DuBois" <histdd@nus.edu.sg> Dear colleagues, Most of us would agree that H-Asia is a uniquely good forum for raising difficult and occasionally unpopular issues. In that tradition, we would like to raise a topic that has been troubling us for some time, in hopes of starting a real dialogue on whether our understanding of this problem is accurate, and if so, how it might be corrected. The issue was raised in a recent meeting of Thomas' graduate seminar in Chinese history, which we should note consists of four students from the PRC and one from Singapore. One of the PRC students casually remarked that this year's meeting of the AAS seemed to have very few Chinese. Just for fun, we pulled up the webpage, and noted that in fact, Chinese names were in a distinct minority among panel presenters, and not an especially large one, at that. Indeed, there were as many Johnsons as Lins, more Smiths than Chens. Of course, China comprises only a part of the AAS, albeit the largest one. Yet on the whole, this does highlight a trend that we find deeply disconcerting. The governing bodies of the AAS and the editorial board of the JAS are comprised almost exclusively of non-Asians. Out of 44 scholars awarded the AAS Levenson Prize for Chinese history since 1987, only five even have Chinese surnames. This prompted a discussion of how well Chinese scholars are represented in Asian studies as a whole. We encouraged our students to do a bit of checking, and they came up with some surprising -- shocking, really -- statistics. In the major research universities in the US, Chinese history is taught almost exclusively by non-Chinese. There are a number of notable exceptions to this, but the overall trend is depressingly clear. (It would be hard to construe Thomas' surname as Chinese, but in the interests of full disclosure, we hasten to add that at least one of us is from no less exotic a location than Indiana). For context, one might step back a moment and imagine the outcry that a similar ratio in the teaching of African-American history would (quite rightly) cause. One might make the argument suggested by the former president of Harvard (concerning the paucity of women in the hard sciences) that participation in certain fields is self-selecting, that is, that Chinese scholars are somehow not attracted to the idea of teaching Chinese history in the United States. Unfortunately, this argument is easily disproved by looking at the large number of very talented Chinese scholars working in smaller (and often less prestigious) teaching institutions. We are absolutely and by no means accusing either the AAS or individual universities of operating with a conscious bias against Chinese scholars. Nor are we suggesting that non-Chinese scholars cannot contribute to the teaching and understanding of Chinese history. Non-Chinese scholars can provide perspective outside of nationalist histories, they can add certain kinds of objectivity, they can infuse new blood and new creativity into stale narratives. A few very talented individuals are culturally and linguistically equally at home in China and the American academy. Beyond these few, non-Chinese scholars can become extremely proficient in the Chinese language, and conduct research at a very high level of empirical sophistication. Arguably, non-Chinese scholars can in any cases communicate more effectively with American students and colleagues, if only because of language ability. Yet at the same time, neither of us can be comfortable with the idea that Chinese scholars seem to be so clearly and consistently underrepresented in the teaching of Chinese history, particularly in those institutions that carry the greatest influence. Sharing a corridor at NUS, we both consider ourselves extremely lucky to be able to work together, but fear that this kind of cooperation may be less characteristic of the field as a whole. Again, our sincere hope in raising these issues is to initiate a discussion within the discipline. We welcome any comment that would prove our perceptions to be mistaken, or even better, suggest ways that we as a scholarly community can better address this problem. Yang Bin and Thomas DuBois Department of History National University of Singapore ************************************************************************* To post to H-ASIA simply send your message to: <H-ASIA@h-net.msu.edu> For holidays or short absences send post to: <listserv@h-net.msu.edu> with message: SET H-ASIA NOMAIL Upon return, send post with message SET H-ASIA MAIL H-ASIA WEB HOMEPAGE URL: http://h-net.msu.edu/~asia/
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