Paul Cohen (historian)

Paul A. Cohen studied at Cornell University from 1952-1953, before he transferred to the University of Chicago, where he received his BA in 1955. He received his MA in 1957 and PhD in 1961 from Harvard University, where he was a student of John King Fairbank and Benjamin I. Schwartz. After completing his doctorate, he worked at the University of Michigan from 1962 to 1963. He was a faculty member in the History department at Amherst College from 1963-1965. Thereafter, he taught at Wellesley College till his retirement. He is currently an Associate of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University.[2] He was formerly married to Jane M. Cohen, now on the faculty at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin.

Cohen is the author of many influential books on modern Chinese history, as well as historiography, such as Discovering History in China (1984; 2010). His works have been translated into several languages including Chinese and Japanese.

• "History and Popular Memory: The Power of Story in Moments of Crisis" (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017)
• Speaking to History: The Story of King Goujian in Twentieth-Century China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.
• China Unbound: Evolving Perspectives on the Chinese Past. London; New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003.
• History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.

Winner of the 1997 John K. Fairbank Prize in East Asian History and the 1997 New England Historical Book Award.

• Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984.
• Between Tradition and Modernity: Wang T’ao and Reform in Late Ch’ing China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974.
• China and Christianity: The Missionary Movement and the Growth of Chinese Antiforeignism, 1860-1870. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963.

• Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies