Four Decades Engagement With Chinese History: A Conversation With Patricia Ebrey

Abstract

Patricia Buckley Ebrey is currently a professor of history at the University of Washington. A leading scholar in the history of Song China, family, gender, and religion, her career mirrors the transformation of the field of Chinese history in many ways. Trained as a sinologist, she was among the first who employed the social sciences to study Chinese history; she not only represents the first generation of women historians in the field of Chinese history, but also was among the first generation of historians to study women in Chinese history. She is an extraordinarily productive scholar, whose interest extends well beyond her primary fields. In addition to a large number of monographs, edited books, and articles covering Chinese history from the Han to late imperial times, she authored and coauthored multiple textbooks in Chinese, East Asian, and world history. In the last three decades, her Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook, The Cambridge Illustrated History of China, China: A Cultural, Social, and Political History, and other coauthored textbooks, have greatly influenced how Chinese history is taught in the United States.