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H-ASIA April 19, 2007 Chinese Scholars and Chinese History/Representation or Excellence? ************************************************************************ From: Tom Oey <oeytg@yahoo.com> I think this is a good discussion. I do believe that among the top US universities there is a "historiographical nexus" in each field of endeavor, including Chinese history. It would be up to new scholars from PRC who have immigrated to the USA to try to understand this historiographical nexus, i.e. which scholars are the most influential and powerful, how they have come to this power, and how they are able to determine the directions of new areas of historiographical research. I think this is an extremely complicated process, and involves one developing insight on how the history of sinology developed in the elite institutions, also how the linkages were developed with lets say European and Greater China institutions (including Taiwan and Hong Kong and Singapore), as well as possibly new directions in global sinology. It probably also goes without saying that one needs to determine which scholars are most influential before one undertakes graduate study, and study with that scholar at that institution--thereby building up one's social capital for the recommendation process. Without having studied with the "right scholar" at the "right institution" it is unlikely a PRC-background scholar could really "break into" the system. Also, the ability to handle historiographical discourse, i.e. use the "right jargon" and allude to appropriate relevant scholars is highly regarded, without it one is simply a "parvenu" and will not be taken seriously. Therefore, one would need to be able to understand the evolution of historiographical discourse not only in Chinese history, but in world history generally. In other words, one should take up the study of western philosophy of history, and western historiography quite seriously if one endeavors to become a top sinologist at a top western university. To say nothing about one's linguistic and philological abilities, i.e. one should not only be a master of Chinese (in which PRC background scholars have an advantage) but of English (in which they have a disadvantage) and also of several western languages and perhaps certain Asian languages. Among the western languages, I would certainly recommend German, French, Dutch and Latin since they relate to the economically more powerful Western countries, but Russian/Slavic and Spanish language sinologies might also be new growth areas. Also one should not necessarily assume that the best PRC sinologists would chose to study in the USA--I would suppose many of the best ones would prefer to remain in China, and there are a number of PRC background scholars in the USA who do not have the same standards as the non-Chinese scholars. Certainly neither PRC background scholars nor non-Chinese scholars would want them promoted to positions of authority or influence as mere "tokens." Best regards Thomas G. Oey, Ph.D. Independent scholar Shaoxing, China ------------------------------------ [Ed. note: Two further points strike me with reference to Tom Oey's post. The first is that the history departments and/or deans doing the hiring in any university, whether "elite" (whatever that means) or not, are not China experts, usually, so they are looking for candidates who present their scholarly work in English in terms familiar to historians of other times and places. The second is that behind this thread lurks the broader question of how communication and interaction between historians of China in the US, the PRC, and all the other settings in which Chinese history is taught and researched can best be stimulated and put on an ongoing footing. The separation between them is a legacy of the political history of since World War Two, and the different intellectual preoccupations that developed in each academic culture, and the cross-fertilization between them is still weaker than it is for my colleagues in European history, for instance, or even, I suspect, between South Asian historians in South Asian countries and beyond them. This strikes me as a more important question than whether PRC-background scholars are teaching at certain select institutions outside China. The ICAS conferences are one recent contribution to broader and deeper connections, and no doubt numerous other bilateral arrangements between particular institutions or between the PRC and particular countries. RD] ************************************************************************* 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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