Merle Goldman

Merle Dorothy Rosenblatt Goldman (March 12, 1931 – November 16, 2023) was an American historian and

Merle Dorothy Rosenblatt was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1931.^[1] Her mother and father were Jewish immigrants from Belarus and Romania, respectively.^[2] She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1953, then took a master's degree from Radcliffe College in 1957. She then went on for a Ph.D. at Harvard University, which she received in 1964 in History and Far Eastern Languages, studying with Benjamin I. Schwartz and John King Fairbank. Fairbank, she later recalled, supported her in her own interests, which were quite different from his. ^[3]

Personal life

In 1953, she married economist Marshall Goldman; they had four children and were married until his death in 2017.^[2]

Goldman died from

Goldman was an instructor at Wellesley College during 1963–1964, then taught in the History Department of Boston University from 1972 until her retirement in 2001. During those years she was Research Associate of the East Asian Research Center, which became the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, at Harvard University, becoming a member of the Executive Committee in 1967 and serving to the present.^[5]

Among her honors, grants and memberships are Radcliffe Graduate Medal for Distinguished Achievement, June 1981;

Goldman was active in her community and the New England China world. Her support for younger scholars was demonstrated by the energy she put into conferences that featured their work and resulted in conference volumes, among which are Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era (1977), China's Intellectuals and the State: In Search of a New Relationship in the People's Republic of China (1987), and for many years she organized the New England China Seminar, at which scholars exchanged work and informal views.[5] Colleagues at the Fairbank Center also recalled her as a pathbreaker at a time when few women entered the China field. For instance, as a young scholar, she wrote to say that she would be unable to attend a conference because she was due to give birth on that date; the organizer, a senior male, replied that "it is your wife, not you, who will be giving birth. Come to the conference!" ^[14]

China: A New History (1992) was the last book by her mentor, John King Fairbank, who finished the manuscript but died before it could be published. The work was edited and seen through the press by Goldman's long-time friend and colleague Paul Cohen.^[15] When the time came for a new edition, Goldman herself added a chapter on developments in China since the first edition, and she is listed as co-author.^[16]

Selected publications

Goldman's publications include more than fifty scholarly articles in addition to articles for the general public in the

• Literary Dissent in Communist China, Harvard University Press, 1967; Atheneum paperback, 1970
• —— (1981). China's Intellectuals: Advise and Dissent. Harvard University Press.
  ISBN 9780674119703
  . "Notable Book," The New York Times
• —— (1994). Sowing the Seeds of Democracy in China: Political Reform in the Deng Xiaoping Decade. Harvard University Press.
  ISBN 9780674830073
  .
• From Comrade to Citizen: The Struggle for Political Rights in China, Harvard University Press, 2007.
• Fairbank, John King; Goldman, Merle (2006). China: A New History. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
  ISBN 0674018281
  .

• Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era, Harvard University Press, 1977; paperback, 1985
• China's Intellectuals and the State: In Search of a New Relationship in the People's Republic of China, edited with an introduction, "Uncertain Change," Council on East Asian Publications, Harvard University, 1987
• Co-editor, Science and Technology in Post-Mao China, Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1989
• Ideas Across Cultures, Essays on Chinese Thought in Honor of Benjamin Schwartz, coedited and introduction written with Paul Cohen, Harvard University Press, 1990
• Fairbank Remembered, co-edited with Paul Cohen, Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, 1992
• The Paradox of China's Reforms, co-edited with Roderick MacFarquhar, Harvard University Press, 1999
• Historical Perspectives on Contemporary East Asia, co-edited, Harvard University Press, 2000
• Intellectual History of Modern China, co-edited with Leo Ou-fan Lee, Cambridge University Press, 2002
• Changing Meanings of Citizenship in Modern China, co-edited, Harvard University Press, 2002
• Chinese Intellectuals between State and Market, co-edited, (London; New York: Routledge, 2005
  ISBN 1134341784
  )
• Grassroots Political Reform in Contemporary China, co-edited with Elizabeth Perry, Harvard University Press, 2007

Notes

References

• Hearst, Nancy; Fewsmith, Joseph (November 24, 2023), Remembering Merle Goldman: Giant Among Scholars, Lifelong Friend of the Fairbank Center, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, retrieved November 30, 2023
• Boston University Department of History
• Link, E. Perry (2000). The Uses of Literature: Life in the Socialist Chinese Literary System. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
  ISBN 0691001979
  .
• Kane, Anthony J. (1993), "The Humanities In Contemporary China Studies: An Uncomfortable Tradition", in Shambaugh David L. (ed.), American Studies of Contemporary China, Washington; Armonk, NY: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; M.E. Sharpe, pp. 65–81,
  ISBN 1563242664
• Mirsky, Jonathan (April 24, 1994), "Unrequited Love", New York Times Sunday Book Review
• "Merle Goldman," in Scanlon, Jennifer; Cosner, Shaaron (1996). American Women Historians, 1700s-1990s: A Biographical Dictionary. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.
  ISBN 0313296642., pp. 91-92

• Merle Goldman WorldCat authority page