Chen Hengzhe: A Life between Orthodoxies

(Hardback)

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This book takes as its starting point the life, activities, and writings of Chen Hengzhe (1890-1976) in order to investigate the effects of transnational experience and in particular the manner in which different, foreign and Chinese, narratives of life were interwoven into activities and attitudes as well as literary and scholarly output at a time between orthodoxies (Jerome Grieder) and of eclectic borrowings in search of change in most areas of national life in China. Chen Hengzhe has been celebrated as Chinas first female professor, first professor of Western history, and first person to publish a history of the West that was not a translation into Chinese. She is moreover celebrated as one of the first to write fiction and poetry in the vernacular and to have been the first to write childrens literature. In 1914 she was among the first group of women to gain a Boxer Indemnity grant to study in America. The reiteration of these many firsts has led to a rather stereotypical portrait of Chen Hengzhe in Chinese sources and, as a result, in most Western references to her. To date we have no critical study of her work or activities in Chinese or any other language. Chen Hengzhes life and textual production, however, deserve and reward closer scholarly attention. They are not only pertinent to analysis of developments in early twentieth-century China; they speak to important questions in China today. This study, then, is not a biography of a person; it is an attempt to understand the way in which foreign influences (narratives of being, organizing, thinking, writing) seep into a persons life and work and meld with the home influences (narratives of being, organizing, thinking, writing) to produce a mix that cannot be predicted by any overarching isms or theories.

Reviews

Gimpel has admirably stitched together a narrative by sifting through Chens extant writings, archival materials at her undergraduate alma mater Vassar College, the accounts of family and friends, and so on.... Gimpels refreshing approach enables her to explore Chens life, and see her in perspective relative to other intellectuals, without forcing her into an ideological pigeonhole. * Nan N: Men, Women and Gender in China *
Denise Gimpel has rendered here a compelling account of Chen Hengzhe, a key bridge builder between China and the West in modern China. A first in a number of important endeavorsfirst female professor at Peking University, one of the first writers of the New Literature, as well as an early explorer of Western scholarshipChen has until now never received the attention she deserves. There is much pathos in the story of a woman who, for all the opportunities presented to her, was unable to take advantage of many of them. This work could not be more relevant to the study of contemporary China, where many of the same intractable issues confronting Chen have once again presented themselves to a new generation of Chinese intellectuals. -- Theodore Huters, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Denise Gimpels book is a pioneering and thought-provoking study of Chen Hengzhe, Chinas first university female professor (appointed in 1920), essayist, interpreter of western history, and cosmopolitan writer of vernacular fiction and poetry. Analyzing Chens transnational life and multiple roles as an agent of cultural translation during the crucial transition period between the end of the imperial monarchy and the advent of the Chinese Peoples Republic, Gimpel illuminates her participation in the creation of new intellectual, institutional and textual spaces as part of the quest to both bring China into the world and bring the world to China. As such, Gimpels study will not only be of interest to literary, cultural and gender historians of twentieth-century China but also to those seeking the modern origins of Chinas globalization. -- Paul Bailey, University of Durham
Chen Hengzhe: A Life between Orthodoxiesfills a significant gap in the study of modern Chinese cultural and intellectual history. Despite her status as China's first female university professor and China's first modern short story writer, Chen Hengzhe has never been the subject of sustained scholarly inquiry. Dr Gimpel's exhaustively researched monograph, which analyses in depth both Chen's literary writings and her scholarly writings, has rectified this situation in a most convincing manner. Moving well beyond the confines of a conventional biography, Gimpel's study resurrects Chen Hengzhe as a hugely important figure among the US-educated elite of early twentieth-century China and a major participant in the translingual practices that make up Chinese modernity. -- Michel Hockx, SOAS, University of London

Author Bio

Denise Gimpel is associate professor of Chinese history and culture at Copenhagen University.