Arthur Frederick Wright (December 3, 1913 – August 11, 1976) was an American historian and sinologist. He was a professor of history at
Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
. He specialized in Chinese social and intellectual history of the pre-modern period.
["Prof. Arthur Wright of Yale, 62, Scholar of Chinese History, Dies,"](_blank)
''New York Times'' (US). August 14, 1976; retrieved 2011-03-14
Early life
Wright's undergraduate degrees at
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
and
Oxford University
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
were followed by further studies at
Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
. He earned a master's degree in 1940; and he was awarded a doctorate in 1947.
Career
Wright and his wife,
Mary C. Wright
Mary Clabaugh Wright (born Mary Oliver Clabaugh; Chinese name Ruì Mǎlì; September 25, 1917 – June 18, 1970) was an American historian and sinologist who specialized in the study of late Qing dynasty and early twentieth century China. She w ...
, joined the faculty of Stanford University in 1947; and both were made full professors in 1958. In 1959, Wright and his wife joined the faculty at Yale. In 1961, Wright became the Charles Seymour Professor of History at Yale.
Wright believed that the scholar "should occasionally stand back and contemplate the whole continuum of time and of problems which give meaning to his specialized studies."
Selected works
In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about Arthur Wright,
OCLC
OCLC, Inc., doing business as OCLC, See also: is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large". It was ...
/
WorldCat
WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the OCL ...
encompasses roughly 70+ works in 200+ publications in 6 languages and 8,800+ library holdings.
WorldCat Identities
Wright, Arthur F. 1913–1976
/ref>
* ''Studies in Chinese Thought'' (1953)
* ''Buddhism in Chinese History'' (1957)
*
* ''Confucianism and Chinese civilization'' (1964)
* ''Perspectives on the Tʻang'' (1973)
*
The Sui Dynasty
' (1978) (about the Sui Dynasty
The Sui dynasty (, ) was a short-lived imperial dynasty of China that lasted from 581 to 618. The Sui unified the Northern and Southern dynasties, thus ending the long period of division following the fall of the Western Jin dynasty, and layi ...
)
* ''The Confucian Persuasion'' (1980)
* ''Studies in Chinese Buddhism'' (1990)
References
1913 births
1976 deaths
20th-century American historians
Alumni of the University of Oxford
American sinologists
Harvard University alumni
Historians of China
Internees at the Weixian Internment Camp
Presidents of the Association for Asian Studies
Stanford University alumni
Writers from Portland, Oregon
Yale University faculty
{{US-academic-stub