Pamela Kyle Crossley

Pamela Kyle Crossley (born 18 November 1955) is a leading historian of modern China, northern Asia, and global history.

Biography

Crossley was educated in Lima, Ohio, and Emmaus, Pennsylvania, and at Swarthmore College, where she was editor-in-chief of "The Phoenix" [http://phoenix.swarthmore.edu/] . She later entered Yale University, where she wrote a dissertation under the direction of Jonathan Spence. She joined the Dartmouth College faculty in Hanover, New Hampshire, in 1985. She holds the Robert 1932 and Barbara Black chair in Southeast Asian Studies and is a Professor of History in the Department of History. After David Farquhar and Gertraude Roth Li, Crossley was among the first scholars writing in English to use Manchu documents to research the history of the Qing. More scholars subsequently adopted this practice. Though she does not teach Manchu to graduate students, Crossley has conducted advanced seminars in Manchu document reading with post-doctoral researchers, mostly from China and South Korea.

Research and publications

Crossley is noted for arguing that the Qing empire was not "sinicized," but was ruled in such a way as to integrate Chinese political values with those of Northeast Asia and Mongolia. She pointed out that Manchu language, religion, documents, and customs remained of great importance to the Qing until the middle nineteenth century. On the other hand, she argued that modern "ethnic" identities in China were the product of an interaction of imperial authority and education, social changes, community life, and individual consciousness. While she disagreed with earlier scholars that Manchus had been sinicized, she did not argue that Manchu culture in modern China was the traditional culture of Northeast Asia. Rather, it was a new product of the experience of individual Manchu communities in China itself, shaped by what she called "the sense of difference that has no outward sign" ("Orphan Warriors"', p.267). Her ideas have been generalized by her and others to an interpretation of modern nationalism as strongly influenced by the legacies of the early modern empires, particularly regarding the roles of language, religion and genealogy in identity. These ideas have been controversial.

Her most recent book is "What is Global History?" (Polity Press, 2008), an examination of narrative strategies in global history that joins a new series of books inspired by E.H. Carr's "What is History?". Crossley's books on Chinese history include "Orphan Warriors: Three Manchu Generations and the End of the Qing World" (Princeton University Press, 1990, also published in Chinese by People's University Press, 2007); "The Manchus" (Blackwells Publishers, 1997); "A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology" (University of California Press, 1999, also published in Chinese by People's University Press, 2008). She is also a co-author of the best-selling global history textbooks, "The Earth and its Peoples" (Houghton Mifflin, 3rd edition, 2004) and "Global Society: The World since 1900" (Houghton Mifflin, 2nd edition, 2007). Crossley is a Guggenheim fellow and a recipient of the Association for Asian Studies Joseph R. Levenson Prize. Her work has been featured in two separate series of "The Cambridge History of China" and "The Cambridge History of Slavery". She is widely published in periodicals such as The "New York Times Literary Supplement", "The New Republic", "Royal Academy Magazine", "Far Eastern Economic Review" and "Calliope", and she has participated in A&E's "In Search of..." series ("The Forbidden City").

Crossley is also a historian of the horse in Eurasia. She has been the first to describe a major change in saddle use and horsemanship that accounts for the strengths and weaknesses of both the Mongol and the Manchu cavalry. This has been reported at a major conference in Beijing as well as in presentations at University of Newcastle, Harvard University, the Institute for Advanced Study, and Willamette University. The research is now in production as a multi-media publication.

oftware development

Crossley is also a software author, and has created applications for Tonseth House Software Development for use by educators, community organizers, and others who need to directly manage web pages. The free applications are specially designed for quick and correct display of all "horizontally-written" scripts, and integrate functions needed for instant web page management.

External links

* [http://www.dartmouth.edu/~crossley/errata.shtml Crossley errata page, Dartmouth website]
* [http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/chinesehistory/pgp/xiaoweiqingessay.htm Xiaowei Zheng, "Sinicization vs. Manchuness: The Success of Manchu Rule"]
* [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2751/is_2001_Spring/ai_72345251 Charles Horner, "China and the Historians" in The National Interest, Spring 2001]
* [http://www.ramagazine.org.uk/index.php?pid=330 The Three Emperors (Royal Academy)]
* [http://www.keene.edu/newsevents/default.cfm?Type=NewsDetail&News_ID=1573 Crossley on Mongolian Art at Thorne-Sagendorph]
* [http://www.aasianst.org/book-prizes-levenson.htm#Crossley 2001 Joseph Levenson Book Prize]
* [http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/eras/edition_5/tighe.htm Justin Tighe, "Crossley, The Manchus"]
* [http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayIssue?jid=MES&volumeId=38&issueId=03 Yougoubian, David N., review of G.R. Garthwaite, "The Persians" in "International Journal of Middle East Studies", Volume 38, No.3, pp.489-491.]
* [http://www.tonsethhouse.net/THSD/Tonseth House Software Development]