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Charlotte Furth

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Charlotte Furth
A young white woman with short dark hair
Charlotte Furth, from a 1972 newspaper
BornJanuary 22, 1934
DiedJune 19, 2022
Occupation(s)College professor, Asian studies scholar
Notable workA Flourishing Yin: Gender in China’s Medical History 960-1665 (1999)

Charlotte Davis Furth (January 22, 1934 – June 19, 2022) was an American scholar of Chinese history. She was a professor at California State University, Long Beach, and at the University of Southern California. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Fulbright fellowship for her research, and published several books.

Early life and education

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Charlotte Davis was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, and raised in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the daughter of Lambert Davis and Isabella Davis.[1] She earned a bachelor's degree in French literature from the University of North Carolina in 1954.[2][3] She completed doctoral studies in Chinese history at Stanford University in 1965, the same year her younger child was born.[4]

Career

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Furth taught history for 23 years at the California State University, Long Beach (CSULB), until 1989, and then for 18 more years at the University of Southern California (USC).[5] In 1972 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.[6][7] She taught at Beijing University in 1981 and 1982, one of the first American Fulbright fellows admitted to teach in China after the Cultural Revolution.[2] She retired with emeritus status from USC in 2008.[4] In 2012 she was honored by the Association for Asian Studies with an award for her "distinguished contributions to Asian Studies."[4]

Publications

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Furth was co-editor of Late Imperial China,[8] and served on the editorial board of The Journal of Asian Studies. She was a contributor to The Cambridge History of China.[2]

  • Ting Wen-Chiang: Science and China’s New Culture (1970)[9]
  • Reflections on the May Fourth Movement: A Symposium (1972, with Merle Goldman and Jerome B. Grieder)[10]
  • The Limits of Change: Essays on Conservative Alternatives in Republican China (1976, edited by Furth)[11]
  • Women in China: Bibliography of Available English Language Materials (1984, with Lucie Cheng and Hon-ming Yip)
  • "Blood, Body, and Gender: Medical Images of the Female Condition in China 1600–1850" (1986)[12]
  • "Concepts of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Infancy in Ch'ing Dynasty China" (1987)[13]
  • "Androgynous Males and Deficient Females: Biology and Gender Boundaries in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century China" (1988)[14]
  • "Chinese Medicine and the Anthropology of Menstruation in Contemporary Taiwan" (1992, with Ch'en Shu-yueh)[15]
  • "Poetry and Women's Culture in Late Imperial China: Editor's Introduction" (1992)[16]
  • A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China’s Medical History 960-1665 (1999)[17]
  • "The Physician as Philosopher of the Way: Zhu Zhenheng (1282–1358)" (2006)[18]
  • Thinking with Cases: Specialist Knowledge in Chinese Cultural History (2007, with Judith T. Zeitlin and Ping-chen Hsiung)[19]
  • Health and Hygiene in Chinese East Asia: Policies and Publics in the Long Twentieth Century (2010, with Angela Ki Che Leung and Qizi Liang)[20]
  • Opening to China: A Memoir of Normalization, 1981–1982 (2017)[21]

Personal life

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In 1956, Charlotte Davis married her childhood friend Montgomery Furth, a philosophy professor.[3] They had two children, David and Isabella.[2] Her husband died in 1991, and she died in 2022, at the age of 88.[4]

References

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  1. ^ Hodges, Betty (1987-01-25). "China Visit Offers Good 'Window' on the Social Place of Asian Women". The Herald-Sun. p. 67. Retrieved 2022-12-13 – via Newspapers.com.
  2. ^ a b c d Crable, Margaret (September 15, 2022). "Trailblazing historian was among the first U.S. scholars to enter China after the communist revolution". USC Dornsife. Retrieved 2022-12-13.
  3. ^ a b "Former Resident Charlotte Furth Wins Fellowship". The Chapel Hill News. 1972-04-26. p. 27. Retrieved 2022-12-13 – via Newspapers.com.
  4. ^ a b c d Hershatter, Gail (2022-06-29). "Charlotte Furth (1934-2022)". Association for Asian Studies. Retrieved 2022-12-13.
  5. ^ "China Historian, Charlotte Furth, to Discuss Historical Approaches to Studying the Human Body at Bard College". Bard in China. 2003. Retrieved 2022-12-13.
  6. ^ "Charlotte Furth". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved 2022-12-13.
  7. ^ "Former Chapel Hill Woman Gets Grant". The Herald-Sun. 1972-04-23. p. 6. Retrieved 2022-12-13 – via Newspapers.com.
  8. ^ "Charlotte Furth". Society for Qing Studies. Retrieved 2022-12-13.
  9. ^ Furth, Charlotte (1970). Ting Wen-chiang: Science and China's New Culture. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-89270-5.
  10. ^ Furth, Charlotte; Goldman, Merle; Grieder, Jerome B. (1972). Reflections on the May Fourth Movement: A Symposium. East Asian Research Center, Harvard University. ISBN 978-0-674-75230-6.
  11. ^ Limits of change. Cambridge: Harvard Univ Press. 2013. ISBN 978-0-674-33296-6. OCLC 900565193.
  12. ^ FURTH, Charlotte (1986). "Blood, Body, and Gender: Medical Images of the Female Condition in China 1600-1850". Chinese Science. 7: 43–66. ISSN 0361-9001. JSTOR 43290359. PMID 11621082.
  13. ^ Furth, Charlotte (February 1987). "Concepts of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Infancy in Ch'ing Dynasty China". The Journal of Asian Studies. 46 (1): 7–35. doi:10.2307/2056664. ISSN 1752-0401. JSTOR 2056664. PMID 11623453. S2CID 12667240.
  14. ^ Furth, Charlotte (1988). "Androgynous Males and Deficient Females: Biology and Gender Boundaries in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century China". Late Imperial China. 9 (2): 1–31. doi:10.1353/late.1988.0002. ISSN 1086-3257. S2CID 145074777.
  15. ^ Furth, Charlotte; Shu-yueh, Ch'en (March 1992). "Chinese Medicine and the Anthropology of Menstruation in Contemporary Taiwan". Medical Anthropology Quarterly. 6 (1): 27–48. doi:10.1525/maq.1992.6.1.02a00030. ISSN 0745-5194.
  16. ^ Furth, Charlotte (1992). "Poetry and Women's Culture in Late Imperial China: Editor's Introduction". Late Imperial China. 13 (1): 1–8. doi:10.1353/late.1992.0001. ISSN 1086-3257. S2CID 144185907.
  17. ^ Furth, Charlotte (1999-03-05). A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China's Medical History: 960–1665. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-91887-0.
  18. ^ Furth, Charlotte (2006). "The Physician as Philosopher of the Way: Zhu Zhenheng (1282-1358)". Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. 66 (2): 423–459. ISSN 0073-0548. JSTOR 25066820.
  19. ^ Furth, Charlotte; Zeitlin, Judith T.; Hsiung, Ping-chen (2007-02-28). Thinking with Cases: Specialist Knowledge in Chinese Cultural History. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-3049-6.
  20. ^ Leung, Angela Ki Che; Liang, Qizi; Furth, Charlotte (2010). Health and Hygiene in Chinese East Asia: Policies and Publics in the Long Twentieth Century. Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0-8223-4826-9.
  21. ^ Furth, Charlotte (2017). Opening to China : a memoir of normalization, 1981-1982. Amherst, New York. ISBN 978-1-60497-984-8. OCLC 972973050.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
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