Paul A. Cohen (Chinese name: , born June 2, 1934

Great Neck, New York Great Neck is a region on Long Island, New York, that covers a peninsula on the North Shore and includes nine villages, among them Great Neck, Great Neck Estates, Great Neck Plaza, Kings Point, and Russell Gardens, and a number of unincorpo ...

) is Edith Stix Wasserman Professor of Asian Studies and History Emeritus at

Wellesley College Wellesley College is a private women's liberal arts college in Wellesley, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1870 by Henry and Pauline Durant as a female seminary, it is a member of the original Seven Sisters Colleges, an unofficial ...

and Associate of the

Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies 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 re ...

Harvard University 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 highe ...

. His research interests include 19th-20th century China; historical thought; American historiography on China. Cohen is the author of influential books on modern Chinese history, as well as historiography, such as ''

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 ...

'' (1984; 2010). His works have been translated into several languages including Chinese and Japanese.

Biography

Paul A. Cohen studied at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

from 1952-1953, before he transferred to the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

, where he received his BA in 1955. He received his MA in 1957 and PhD in 1961 from

, where he was a student of

John King 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 C ...

and

Benjamin I. Schwartz Benjamin Isadore Schwartz (December 12, 1916 – November 14, 1999) was an American academic, political scientist, and sinologist who wrote on a wide range of topics in Chinese politics and intellectual history. He taught at Harvard his entire c ...

. After completing his doctorate, he worked at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

from 1962 to 1963. He was a faculty member in the History department at Amherst College from 1963-1965. Thereafter, he taught at Wellesley College till his retirement. He is currently an Associate of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. He was formerly married to Jane M. Cohen, now on the faculty at the

University of Texas School of Law The University of Texas School of Law (Texas Law) is the law school of the University of Texas at Austin. Texas Law is consistently ranked as one of the top law schools in the United States and is highly selective—registering the 8th lowest ac ...

Austin Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the seat and largest city of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the 11th-most-populous city ...

Selected publications

''China and Christianity: The Missionary Movement and the Growth of Chinese Antiforeignism, 1860-1870''
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963.

Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974.
''Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past''
New York: Columbia University Press, 1984.
''History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth''
New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. : Winner of the 1997

John K. Fairbank Prize The John K. Fairbank Prize in East Asian History is offered annually for an outstanding book in the history of China proper, Vietnam, Chinese Central Asia, Mongolia, Manchuria, Korea, or Japan, substantially after 1800. It honors the late John K. F ...

in East Asian History and the 1997 New England Historical Book Award.
''China Unbound: Evolving Perspectives on the Chinese Past''
London; New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003.
''Speaking to History: The Story of King Goujian in Twentieth-Century China''
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.
''History and Popular Memory: The Power of Story in Moments of Crisis''
New York: Columbia University Press, 2017. *

External links

Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cohen, Paul American sinologists Historians of China 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers Living people University of Michigan faculty Harvard University alumni University of Chicago alumni Cornell University alumni Year of birth missing (living people) American male non-fiction writers