Joseph Richmond Levenson (June 10, 1920 – April 6, 1969) was a scholar of

Chinese history The earliest known written records of the history of China date from as early as 1250 BC, from the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BC), during the reign of king Wu Ding. Ancient historical texts such as the ''Book of Documents'' (early chapter ...

and Jane K. Sather Professor of History at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. After graduating from

Boston Latin School The Boston Latin School is a public exam school in Boston, Massachusetts. It was established on April 23, 1635, making it both the oldest public school in the British America and the oldest existing school in the United States. Its curriculum f ...

in 1937 and

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher lea ...

in 1941, Levenson enlisted in the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

in 1942. He attended Japanese Language School and saw active service in the

Solomon Islands Solomon Islands is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 900 smaller islands in Oceania, to the east of Papua New Guinea and north-west of Vanuatu. It has a land area of , and a population of approx. 700,000. Its capita ...

and Philippines campaigns. After the war he earned M.A. (1947) and PhD (1949) degrees at Harvard, where he was a student of

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 is credited with building the field of Ch ...

. He was a member of the

Harvard Society of Fellows The Society of Fellows is a group of scholars selected at the beginnings of their careers by Harvard University for their potential to advance academic wisdom, upon whom are bestowed distinctive opportunities to foster their individual and intell ...

. He taught at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1951 until his death. He drowned in a canoeing accident in the Russian River, California, in 1969.

Honors and awards

Levenson earned a number of awards and prizes, including

Fulbright The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...

(1954–55), the

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) is an interdisciplinary research lab at Stanford University that offers a residential postdoctoral fellowship program for scientists and scholars studying "the five core social a ...

(1958–59); Guggenheim (1962–63); and the

American Council of Learned Societies American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

(1966–67). In honor of his scholarly and pedagogical contributions, two awards are made in his name: the China and Inner Asia Council of the

Association for Asian Studies The Association for Asian Studies (AAS) is a scholarly, non-political and non-profit professional association focusing on Asia and the study of Asia. It is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. The Association provides members with an Annua ...

offers the

Joseph Levenson Book Prize Joseph Levenson Book Prize is awarded each year in memory of Joseph R. Levenson by the Association for Asian Studies to two English-language books, one whose main focus is on China before 1900 and the other for works on post-1900 China. According to ...

AAS CIAC Levenson Book Prize Winners
and one by Harvard University for excellence in undergraduate teaching.

Intellectual achievements

Paul Cohen Paul Joseph Cohen (April 2, 1934 – March 23, 2007) was an American mathematician. He is best known for his proofs that the continuum hypothesis and the axiom of choice are independent from Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, for which he was award ...

commented in his study of American historical writing on China, ''

Discovering History in China ''Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past'' is a book by Paul A. Cohen introducing the ideas behind American histories of China since 1840. It was published by Columbia University Press in 1984 and rep ...

'', that Levenson addressed "the issues of modernization and cultural change more persistently, imaginatively, and, for many of his readers, persuasively than perhaps any other American historian of China in the immediate postwar decades".

Notes

References and further reading

* * James Cahill,
Joseph Levenson's Role In My Development As A Scholar And Writer
" *

Joseph Levenson and the Historiography of the 1950s and 1960s
in * * * * * Henry F. May,

H. Franz Schurmann Herbert Franz Schurmann (June 21, 1926 – August 20, 2010) was an American sociologist and historian who was best known for his research and writings about Communist China during the Cold War period. Schurmann taught at the University of Califo ...

Frederic Wakeman Frederic Evans Wakeman, Jr. (; December 12, 1937 – September 14, 2006) was an American scholar of East Asian history and Professor of History at University of California, Berkeley. He served as president of the American Historical Association ...

,
Joseph Richmond Levenson, History, Berkeley
" (Necrology)

Calisphere The California Digital Library (CDL) was founded by the University of California in 1997. Under the leadership of then UC President Richard C. Atkinson, the CDL's original mission was to forge a better system for scholarly information management a ...

University of California. * * Don J. Wyatt
Joseph Richmond LevensonInternational Directory of Intellectual Historians

Selected works

Articles and chapters

* "The Humanistic Disciplines: Will Sinology Do?," ''The Journal of Asian Studies'' 23.04 (1964): 507–512.

Books

* ''Liang Ch'i-ch'ao and the Mind of Modern China'' (1953) * ''Confucian China and Its Modern Fate'' (1958-1965) * ''China: an interpretive history, from the beginnings to the fall of Han'' (1969) * ''Revolution and Cosmopolitanism: the Western stage and the Chinese stages'' (1971)

External links

Guide to the Joseph Richmond Levenson Papers
at

The Bancroft Library The Bancroft Library in the center of the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, is the university's primary special-collections library. It was acquired from its founder, Hubert Howe Bancroft, in 1905, with the proviso that it retai ...

1920 births 1969 deaths Harvard College alumni 20th-century American historians American male non-fiction writers American sinologists Boston Latin School alumni 20th-century American male writers United States Navy personnel of World War II {{US-historian-stub