Founded in 1956 in association with the predecessor of Columbia University's Weatherhead East Asian Institute, the Modern China Seminar has been a forum for presentaton of China-related research-in-progress. (Click for Recent years' presentations.)
Among the earlist presenters were C. Martin Wilbur, Searle Bates, Franklin Ho, James Morley, and Howard Boorman. Members of the seminar then included faculty from Yale, Princeton, Rutgers, and other New York-area scholars. In those days the field was very small, but in the 1960s more people were attracted to the field, and the Seminar began to grow.For the first decades, "Modern China" for the Seminar's purposes generally ended with the 1940s and extended back, at the most, only to the mid-19th century. Between 1972 through 1977 only a few papers dealt substantially with pre-1900 matters. But this began to change, and in 1977-78 alone, three papers dealt with pre-1900, and now the "modern" era is seen as reaching back to the 17th century. Also by the late 1970s, increasing attention began to be paid to the Communist era.
At the same time, in terms of content, history was being redefined to include a broad array of social issues, such as public health, popular culture, the common soldier, and women's history, seen through the lenses of various disciplines (economics, anthropology, political science, philosophy, art history, and literature) in addition to more traditional history.
At a time when women were extremely under-represented in the field, a deliberate effort was made to correct this situation within the seminar. Whereas between 1972 and 1977 only two women presented papers, in 1977-1978 alone three women gave presentations. During the 1980s a distinguished array of women scholars presented papers, and the seminar was almost always chaired or co-chared by a woman.
The seminar has always made a point or presenting a balanced mix of younger and seasoned scholars. On occasion, we have had non-China specialists present papers of interest or (more commonly) serve as discussants for papers by China hands.
Another very welcome change from the earlier years has been the enrichment resulting from the frequent presentation of papers people who had done fieldwork in China, and especially by scholars who grew up in post-1949 China--something that had not been possible at all before the 1980s, and remained rare until the 1990s.
A large portion of papers presented to the seminars eventually became parts of published books. Examples (to mention only Columbia University scholars) are Andrew Nathan's "The County-Level Elections, 1979-1981" (which eventually appeared in Chinese Democracy), Carl Riskin's "Maoist Economics in Retrospect" (in China's Political Economy?), James Seymour's "The Prison Systems of Northwest China" (in New Ghosts, Old Ghosts: Prisons and Labor Reform Camps in China), and Madeleine Zelin's "Obstacles to Reform in the Yung-cheng Period: Low level corruption and the Kiangnan Tax Clearance Case," which became part of The Magistrate's Tael. Thus the seminar has played a catalytic role in deepening and expanding China scholarship.
The Modern China Seminar is one of Columbia University's "University Seminars," which date back to the winter of 1940-41, when the historian of Latin America, Frank Tannenbaum first proposed the Seminars to bring the specialized knowledge of scholars, apart from their individual efforts, to focus on problems before the University and the world. Four years later, as World War II drew to a close, the first five seminars began meeting. Twenty years on, there were thirty-five Seminars, but Tannenbaum began to worry about their future, saying "these Collegia can only survive in a state of creative spontaneity which is a kind of order by itself." After two years of discussion, the University Council approved a Constitution for the University Seminars, a structure that would provide this protection. It gave overall responsibility for the activities of the Seminars to the General Committee of chairs, working through an Advisory Committee in consultation with the director between meetings. Each of these separate Seminars came to be accepted as "an independent universe" inside of the University, without interference as long as it abides within the broad limits of the academic tradition, free to pursue its intellectual involvement." In their wills Tannenbaum and his wife endowed the Seminars with a million and a half dollars, which Columbia has managed for almost thirty-five years. The income on that gift supports most of this enterprise.You may hit your "back" button, or click here for University Seminars' page.
Page updated 23 Sept. 2003.