Bu awarded Mellon Fellowship
Dr.
Liping Bu, Alma College associate professor of History, has been
awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for 2006 by the Needham Research
Institute (NRI) at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.
During her semester-long stay at the Needham Institute Bu intends to research the interaction between traditional Chinese medicine and Western "scientific" medicine during the modernization of Chinese society. She will examine how social Darwinism — "the survival of the fittest" — and nationalism influenced Chinese reformers' and revolutionaries' beliefs that physical fitness leads to a strong nation.
The prestigious Mellon Fellowship presents Bu and Alma College with opportunities that can benefit students. Bu's research at NRI will be included in her upcoming book about the modernization of China that started in 1895.
"With the information I gain from research at the world's best Chinese archives, I can teach with specific examples in my China 20th Century class," she said.
NRI is a recognized global center for the study of the history of East Asian science, technology and medicine. Home of the Science and Civilisation in China Project, it houses the East Asian History of Science Library containing a unique collection of books and other published materials on the history of science, technology and medicine in East Asia.
A native of China and a graduate of Beijing University, Bu took students to China during Spring Term in 2002, 2004 and 2005 to study the history and culture. She is the author of Making the World Like Us: Education, Cultural Expansion, and the American Century (Praeger, 2003) and co-editor of The Cultural Turn: Essays in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations (Imprint, 2001). She is working on her third book tentatively titled Public Health and Nation-Building in Early 20th Century China.
Bu has received several fellowships, including a National Endowment for the Humanities summer fellowship in 1999. In 2002, she earned Alma's Posey Award for Faculty Excellence in Teaching and Scholarship. She will present "Public Health and Modernization in Early 20th Century China" at the symposium on "Global Health Histories" sponsored by the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.
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Posted: Thu, June 30th, 2005 at 2:01PM
