FROM TEXAS TO ZHEJIANG: THE INTELLECTUAL JOURNEY OF A CHINA SCHOLAR—AN INTERVIEW WITH R. KEITH SCHOPPA

Abstract

Robert Keith Schoppa was educated at Valparaiso University and the University of Hawaii. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1975, where he studied with Albert Feuerwerker and Ernest Young. The bulk of his research has been on China in the twentieth and nineteenth centuries, with a particular focus on Zhejiang province. While most of his work has related to the great issues of Modern China, he has always been interested in the relationships between grand narratives and particular topics. He has published studies that deal with the daily plight of wartime refugees (Sea of Bitterness), the effect of centuries of change on a particular region (Song Full of Tears) and the choices and fate of a single reformer and politician. The last of these, Blood Road: The Mystery of Shen Dingyi in Revolutionary China, was awarded the Association for Asian Studies’ Joseph Levenson prize as the best book on post-1900 Chinese history in 1997. Professor Schoppa has also published reference works, source collections, and textbooks in his varied career. He is currently the Edward and Catherine Doehler Chair in Asian History at Loyola University Maryland.

Keywords:

• R. Keith Schoppa
• modern China scholarship
• Zhejiang
• Ernest Young
• Paul Cohen

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alan Baumler

Alan Baumler is an Associate Professor of History at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of China and Opium under the Republic: Worst than Floods and Wild Beasts (2007) and Opium and Modern China: A Reader (2001).