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Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies

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The Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University is a post-graduate research center promoting the study of modern and contemporary China from a social science perspective. The center hosts and organizes academic activities, provides research funds for faculty and students, and helps policy-makers and news media to understand modern China. The center sponsors the Edwin O. Reischauer Lectures .

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41-541: The center was established in the 1955 as the Center for East Asian Research. and on the retirement of its founding director, John K. Fairbank . The center was renamed the John K. Fairbank Center for East Asian Research. From its beginnings in 1955, its focus was on modern and contemporary China, diverging from classic sinology , which emphasized the study of texts from a humanistic perspective. To celebrate its 60th anniversary,

82-624: A career of her own in Chinese art history. John and Wilma came to know a number of Chinese intellectuals. They became especially warm friends with Liang Sicheng , the son of the Chinese reformer Liang Qichao , and his wife, Lin Huiyin , whom they called Phyllis. The Lins introduced them to Jin Yuelin , a philosopher and originally a political scientist trained at Columbia University. Fairbank wrote later that he and Wilma began to sense through them that

123-813: A noted hospital social worker at Massachusetts General Hospital . In his autobiography The Way of an Investigator , Cannon counts himself among the descendants of Jacques de Noyon , a French Canadian explorer and coureur des bois . His Calvinist family was intellectually active, including readings from James Martineau , John Fiske (philosopher) , and James Freeman Clarke . Cannon's curiosity also led him to Thomas Henry Huxley , John Tyndall , George Henry Lewes , and William Kingdon Clifford . A high school teacher, Mary Jeannette Newson, became his mentor . "Miss May" Newson motivated him and helped him take his academic skills into Harvard University in 1892. Upon finishing his undergraduate studies in 1896, he entered Harvard Medical School. He started using X-rays to study

164-482: A physiological or biochemical point of view. Cannon proposed the existence and functional unity of the sympathoadrenal (or “sympathoadrenomedullary” or “sympathico-adrenal”) system. He theorized that the sympathetic nervous system and the adrenal gland work together as a unit to maintain homeostasis in emergencies. To identify and quantify adrenaline release during stress, beginning in about 1919 Cannon exploited an ingenious experimental setup. He would surgically excise

205-497: A prudent choice. Fairbank later admitted that he then knew nothing about China itself. In 1929, when he graduated from Harvard summa cum laude , he went to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar . At Oxford, Fairbank began his study of the Chinese language and sought the counsel of H.B. Morse , retired from the Imperial Maritime Customs Service . On Webster's advice, he had read Morse's three-volume study of

246-520: A useful end. He took on the role of a naturalist where believed that the body and mind are inseparable as an organismic unit. The explanations of his work should enable man to live more wisely, happily, and intelligently without the interjection of supernatural interference. E. Digby Baltzell said that Dr. Cannon was once offered a job at the Mayo Clinic for twice his Harvard salary. Cannon declined, saying "I don't need twice as much money. All I need

287-711: Is credited with building the field of China studies in the United States after World War II with his organizational ability, his mentorship of students, support of fellow scholars, and formulation of basic concepts to be tested. The Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard is named after him. Among his most widely read books are The United States and China , first published in 1948 and revised editions in 1958, 1979, and 1983; East Asia: The Great Tradition (1960) and East Asia The Great Transformation (1965), co-authored with Edwin O. Reischauer ; and his co-edited series, The Cambridge History of China . Fairbank

328-762: Is fifty cents for a haircut once a month, and fifty cents a day to get lunch." Cannon was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1906, the American Philosophical Society in 1908, and the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1914. Cannon supported animal experimentation and opposed the arguments of anti- vivisectionists . In 1911, he authored a booklet for the American Medical Association criticizing

369-862: The China Lobby and many other Americans accused the China Hands of selling out an ally, promoting the spread of communism, and being under Soviet influence. During an intensification of the Cold War in 1949, Fairbank was targeted for being "soft" on communism and was denied a visa to visit Japan. In 1952, he testified before the McCarran Committee , but his secure position at Harvard protected him. Ironically, many of Fairbank's Chinese friends and colleagues who returned to China after 1949, such as Fei Xiaotong , Ch'ien Tuan-sheng, and Chen Han-seng , would later be attacked for being "pro-American," as

410-701: The Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies after his retirement. He was its director from 1955 to 1973. Fairbank raised money to support fellowships for graduate students, trained influential China historians at Harvard, and placed them widely in universities and colleges in the US and overseas. He welcomed and funded researchers from all over the world to spend time in Cambridge and hosted a series of conferences, which brought scholars together and yielded publications, many of which Fairbank edited himself. He established

451-797: The Wicht Club with other young instructors for social and professional purposes. In 1906, Cannon succeeded Bowditch as the Higginson Professor and chairman of the Department of Physiology at Harvard Medical School until 1942. From 1914 to 1916, Cannon was also President of the American Physiological Society . He was married to Cornelia James Cannon , a best-selling author and feminist reformer. On July 19, 1901, during their honeymoon in Montana, they were

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492-402: The motility of the stomach . Withi his first experiments, he was able to watch the course of a button down a dog's esophagus. He said in his autobiography, The Way of an Investigator , "The whole purpose of my effort was to see the peristaltic waves to learn their effects. Only after some time did I note that the absence of activity was accompanied by signs of perturbation, and when serenity

533-514: The China Coast in 1953. One of his students, Paul Cohen , noted that the approaches or stages in the development of China studies of the 1950s are sometimes referred to as "the Harvard 'school' of China studies." Fairbank played a major role in developing Harvard as a leading American center for East Asian studies, including establishing the Center for East Asian Research, which was renamed

574-546: The China Coast: The Opening of the Treaty Ports, 1842–1854 in 1953. Fairbank returned to Harvard in 1936 to take up a position teaching Chinese history and was its first full-time specialist at Harvard. In 1941 he and Edwin O. Reischauer worked out a year-long introductory survey covering China and Japan, later adding Korea and Southeast Asia. The course was known as "Rice Paddies," and it became

615-590: The Chinese Communist Party took on a stance that was increasingly anti-Western in the 1950s and the 1960s. Critics in Taiwan charged that Fairbank was a communist tool. According to Chen Lifu , former Republic of China minister of education , Fairbank and his wife "spread rumors, attacked Chinese government officials, and provided false information to the United States government, which helped to produce incorrect policies that eventually benefited

656-488: The Chinese problem was the "necessity to winnow the past and discriminate among things foreign, what to preserve and what to borrow...." Sicheng gave Wilma and John Chinese names, his was Fei Zhengqing, "Fei" being a common family name, and "Zhengqing", meaning "upright and clear". Hers was "Weimei", which means "comforting plum." In 1936, Oxford awarded him a D.Phil. for his thesis , which he revised using further research and eventually published as Trade and Diplomacy on

697-539: The Harvard East Asian Series, which published monographs to enable students to publish dissertations, which was essential for achieving tenure. Fairbank and his colleagues at Harvard, Edwin O. Reischauer and Albert Craig, wrote a textbook on China and Japan, A History of East Asian Civilization . Fairbank established links to figures in government both by training journalists, government officials, and foundation executives and by giving his thoughts to

738-559: The Qing dynasty's foreign relations on the ship that was coming to England. Morse became his mentor. The young scholar decided to go to China for language study and research and arrived in China in January 1932. In Beijing, he studied at Tsinghua University under the direction of the prominent historian Tsiang Tingfu , who introduced him to the study of newly available diplomatic sources and

779-643: The Radical Historians' Caucus attempted to persuade the American Historical Association to pass an anti-Vietnam War resolution. A later report said a "debacle unfolded as Harvard historian (and AHA president in 1968) John Fairbank literally wrestled the microphone from Zinn's hands", in what Fairbank called "our briefly-famous Struggle for the Mike." Fairbank finished the manuscript of his final book, China: A New History in

820-410: The adrenal glands. From the difference in the heart rate between the two animals, he could further infer that the hormone responsible for the increase in heart rate came from the adrenal glands. Moreover, the amount of increase in the heart rate provided a measure of the amount of hormone released. Cannon became so convinced that the sympathetic nervous system and adrenal gland functioned as a unit that in

861-484: The arguments of anti-vivisectionists. Walter Cannon died on October 1, 1945, in Franklin, New Hampshire . Walter Cannon began his career in science as a Harvard undergraduate in the year 1892. Henry Pickering Bowditch , who had worked with Claude Bernard , directed the laboratory in physiology at Harvard. Here Cannon began his research: he used the newly discovered x-rays to study the mechanism of swallowing and

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902-681: The basis for two influential texts: East Asia: The Great Tradition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960) and East Asia: The Modern Transformation (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965). Following the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941, Fairbank was enlisted for service in the Office of Strategic Services in Washington and the Office of War Information in Chongqing , the temporary capital of Nationalist China . When he returned to Harvard after

943-593: The center organized a symposium discussing the changes in the landscape of Chinese studies and the changing role of the center. List of directors of the Fairbank Center: 42°22′30″N 71°06′47″W  /  42.375°N 71.113°W  / 42.375; -71.113 John K. Fairbank John King Fairbank (May 24, 1907 – September 14, 1991) was an American historian of China and United States–China relations . He taught at Harvard University from 1936 until his retirement in 1977. He

984-583: The communist forces". During the Vietnam War in the late 1960s, Fairbank, who had earlier been criticized as being pro-communist, came under fire from younger scholars and graduate students in the new Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars , which he had helped form but then soon ended his participation. The younger scholars charged that Fairbank and other leaders of the area studies movement had helped to justify American imperialism in Asia. By his grounding

1025-423: The field for both students and the general public. In 1972, in preparation for Nixon 's visit, the book was read by leaders on both sides. Fairbank taught at Harvard until he retired in 1977. He published a number of both academic and non-academic works on China, many of which would reach a wide audience outside academia. He also published an expanded revision of his doctoral dissertation as Trade and Diplomacy on

1066-536: The first people to reach the summit of the unclimbed southwest peak (2657 m or 8716 ft) of Goat Mountain, between Lake McDonald and Logan Pass . That area is now Glacier National Park . The peak was subsequently named, Mount Cannon , by the United States Geological Survey The couple had five children; A son, Dr. Bradford Cannon , a military plastic surgeon and radiation researcher. The daughters were Wilma Cannon Fairbank (who

1107-473: The government on policy on China. In 1966, Fairbank and the sinologist Denis C. Twitchett , then at Cambridge University , set in motion plans for The Cambridge History of China . Originally intended to cover the entire history of China in six volumes, the project grew until it reached a projected 15 volumes. Twitchett and Fairbank divided the history, with Fairbank editing volumes on modern (post-1800) China, and Twitchett and others took responsibility for

1148-488: The nerves supplying the heart of a laboratory animal such as a dog or cat. Then he would subject the animal to a stressor and record the heart rate response. With the nerves to the heart removed, he could deduce that if the heart rate increased in response to the perturbation, then the increase in heart rate must have resulted from the actions of a hormone. Finally, he would compare the results of an animal with intact adrenal glands with those in an animal from which he had removed

1189-760: The period from the Qin to the early Qing dynasties. Fairbank edited and wrote parts of Volumes 10 to 15, the last of which appeared in the year after his death. Martha Henderson Coolidge and Richard Smith completed and published Fairbank's biography of H. B. Morse. Among his students were Albert Feuerwerker , Merle Goldman , Joseph Levenson , Immanuel C. Y. Hsu , Akira Iriye , Philip A. Kuhn , Kwang-ching Liu , Roderick MacFarquhar , Rhoads Murphey , David S. Nivison , Andrew Nathan , David Tod Roy , Benjamin I. Schwartz , Franz Schurmann , Teng Ssu-yu , James C. Thomson Jr. , Theodore White , John E. Wills Jr. , Alexander Woodside , Guy S. Alitto , Mary C. Wright . Fairbank

1230-611: The perspectives of Chinese scholarship, which balanced the British approaches he saw at Oxford. Wilma Denio Cannon , the eldest daughter of Walter Bradford Cannon and sister of Marian Cannon Schlesinger , came to China in 1932 to join Fairbank. They were married on June 29, 1932. Wilma had studied fine arts at Radcliffe College and had been an apprentice to the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera before she traveled to China. She began

1271-421: The physiology of digestion while working with Henry P. Bowditch. In 1900 he received his medical degree. After graduation, Cannon was hired by William Townsend Porter at Harvard as an instructor in the Department of Physiology while continuing his digestion study. Cannon was promoted to an assistant professor of physiology in 1902. He was a close friend of the physicist, G. W. Pierce , and together they founded

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1312-464: The skeletal muscle of the limbs, adrenaline relaxes blood vessels which increases local blood flow. Adrenaline constricts blood vessels in the skin and minimizes blood loss from physical trauma. Adrenaline also releases the key metabolic fuel, glucose, from the liver into the bloodstream. However, the fact that aggressive attack and fearful escape both involve adrenaline release into the bloodstream does not imply an equivalence of “fight” with “flight” from

1353-517: The study of Asia in modernization theory , Fairbank and other liberal scholars presented China as an irrational country, which needed American tutelage. Since Fairbank rejected revolution, he condoned imperialism. A further charge was that scholars of the Harvard School had put forth a "radical new version" of China's modern history that argued imperialism "was largely beneficial in China." In December 1969, Howard Zinn and other members of

1394-565: The summer of 1991. On September 14, 1991, he delivered the manuscript to Harvard University Press , then returned home and suffered a fatal heart attack. He was survived by his wife, Wilma, and their two daughters, Laura Fairbank Haynes and Holly Fairbank Tuck. In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about John King Fairbank, OCLC / WorldCat encompasses roughly 600+ works in 1,500+ publications in 15 languages and 43,000+ library holdings. Walter Bradford Cannon Walter Bradford Cannon (October 19, 1871 – October 1, 1945)

1435-582: The war, Fairbank inaugurated a master's degree program in area studies , one of several major universities in the United States to do so. That approach at Harvard was multi-disciplinary and aimed to train journalists, government officials, and others who did not want careers in academia. That broad approach, combined with Fairbank's experience in China during the war, shaped his United States and China (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, Foreign Policy Library, 1948). That survey went through new editions in 1958 and 1970, each synthesizing scholarship in

1476-588: Was an American physiologist , professor and chairman of the Department of Physiology at Harvard Medical School . He coined the term " fight or flight response ", and developed the theory of homeostasis . He popularized his theories in his book The Wisdom of the Body , first published in 1932. Cannon was born on October 19, 1871, in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin , the son of Colbert Hanchett Cannon and his wife Wilma Denio. His sister Ida Maud Cannon (1877-1960) became

1517-485: Was an elected member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society . In the late 1940s, Fairbank was among the so-called China Hands , who predicted the victory of Mao Zedong 's Chinese Communist Party and advocated the establishment of relations with the new government. Although Fairbank argued that relations with the new China would be in the American national interest,

1558-533: Was born in Huron, South Dakota , in 1907. His father was Arthur Boyce Fairbank (1873–1936), a lawyer, and his mother was Lorena King Fairbank (1874–1979), who campaigned for women's suffrage . His paternal grandfather, John Barnard Fairbank, was "from the long 'J.B.' line, mainly of Congregational ministers, which stemmed from the Fairbank family that came to Massachusetts in 1633 [and] graduated... from Union Theological Seminary , New York, in 1860." John K. Fairbank

1599-589: Was educated at Sioux Falls High School, Phillips Exeter Academy , the University of Wisconsin–Madison , Harvard College , and Oxford University ( Balliol ). As an undergraduate, he was advised by Charles Kingsley Webster , the distinguished British diplomatic historian who was then teaching at Harvard, to choose a relatively-undeveloped field of study. Webster suggested that since the Qing dynasty 's archives were then being opened, China's foreign relations would be

1640-490: Was married to John K. Fairbank ), Linda Cannon Burgess, Helen Cannon Bond, and Marian Cannon Schlesinger , a painter and author living in Cambridge, Massachusetts . His actions and his statements may infer his philosophy of life. Born into a Calvinistic family, he broke away from religious authoritarianism and became independent from his prior dogma. Later in life, he states that naturally occurring events are what makes for

1681-685: Was restored the waves promptly reappeared." He demonstrated deglutition in a goose at the APS meeting in December 1896 and published his first paper on this research in the first issue of the American Journal of Physiology in January 1898. In 1945 Cannon summarized his career in physiology by describing his focus at different ages: As per Cannon, adrenaline exerts several important effects on different body organs, all of which maintain homeostasis in fight-or-flight situations. For example, in

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