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Joseph Richmond Levenson (June 10, 1920 – April 6, 1969) was a scholar of Chinese history and Jane K. Sather Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. 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 in 1941, Levenson enlisted in the United States Navy in 1942. He attended Japanese Language School and saw active service in the Solomon Islands 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 Chi ...
. 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 (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 and ...
(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, p ...
(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 t ...
AAS CIAC Levenson Book Prize Winners
and one by Harvard University for excellence in undergraduate teaching.


Intellectual achievements

Paul Cohen commented in his study of American historical writing on China, '' Discovering History in China'', 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
" * Paul Cohen
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 Calif ...
,
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 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