Edward H. Hume
Dr. Edward H. Hume (1876–1957) devoted much of his long and vigorous life to working in China and elsewhere in the cause of health care and medical training. He graduated from Yale College in 1897, and received his medical degree four years later from Johns Hopkins University. He worked in India from 1903 to 1905 before going to China, where he founded the Xiangya School of Medicine and Xiangya Hospital (previously known as the Hsiang-ya Medical School and Hospital) under the auspices of the Yale-China Association (previously named Yale-in-China) in Changsha.
Dr. Hume served as President of the Colleges of Yale-in-China from 1923 to 1927. He returned to the United States but was recalled to China in 1934 to work for several years in liaison with the Chinese National Health Administration. From 1937 until his retirement, Dr. Hume directed the Christian Medical Council for Overseas Work in New York City, and wrote a number of books about his medical work in China, including The Chinese Way in Medicine (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1940) and Doctors East, Doctors West; an American Physician’s Life in China (New York,: Norton, 1946). Shortly after his death in 1957, funds from colleagues, friends, and family enabled the establishment of the Edward H. Hume Memorial Lectureship to bring to Yale eminent scholars of East Asian studies.
Edward H. Hume Memorial Lectures at Yale University
| 2024-2025 |
Jean C. Oi, Stanford University "The Evolution of China’s Development Model" |
| 2023-2024 |
Timothy Cheek, University of British Columbia "Compacts, Cultivation, and Campaigns: Lives of the Pedagogical State in Modern China" |
| 2022-2023 |
Nicolas Standaert, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven |
| 2021-2022 |
Rana Mitter, University of Oxford |
| 2019-2020 |
Gail Hershatter, UC Santa Cruz "Homebound: One Woman’s Chinese Revolution, 1900-1975" |
| 2018-2019 |
Thomas J. Christensen, Columbia University |
| 2017-2018 |
Jonathan Hay, New York University "What Is a Tradition? Consider, for example, Chinese Painting …" |
| 2016-2017 |
You-tien Hsing, UC Berkeley "Surviving Conservation: Herders and Farmers in China’s Northwest" |
| 2015-2016 |
Stephen Owen, Harvard University |
| 2014-2015 |
David Der-wei Wang, Harvard University "The Lyrical in Epic Time: The Stories of Shen Congwen and Feng Zhi" |
| 2013-2014 |
Andrew Nathan, Columbia University "What Drives Chinese Foreign Policy: Vulnerability or Ambition?" |
| 2012-2013 |
Angela Leung, The University of Hong Kong "Charity, Medicine, and Religion: The Quest for Modernity in Canton (ca, 1870-1937)" |
| 2011-2012 |
Ching Kwan Lee, UC Los Angeles "The ‘Labor Question’ of Chinese Capitalism in Africa" |
| 2010-2011 |
Rudolf Wagner, University of Heidelberg "Concepts on the Move Across Languages: Words, Metaphors, and Images for the Chinese State, 1800-1920" |
| 2009-2010 |
Timothy Brook, University of British Columbia "Forging Value: The Production of Luxury Commodities in Late Ming China" |
| 2008-2009 |
Susan Shirk, UC San Diego "The Information Revolution in China" |
| 2007-2008 |
Stephen F. Teiser, Princeton University "The Construction of Paradise in Chinese Buddhist Liturgies" |
| 2006-2007 |
Benjamin Elman, Princeton University "Bracketing [Modernity]: Reconsidering Sino-Japanese Cultural History, 1700 - 1850" |
| 2005-2006 |
David Shambaugh, George Washington University "Power Shift: China, the United States, and Regional Order in Asia" |
| 2004-2005 |
Kenneth Pomeranz, UC Irvine "Contesting the High Ground: Mt. Tai and its Goddess in Late Imperial and Modern Chinese Society" |
| 2003-2004 |
Roderick MacFarquhar, Harvard University "China in Transition" |
| 2002-2003 |
Erik Zürcher, Professor Emeritus and Former General Director, Sinological Institute, University of Leiden "Integration and Alienation: The Two Faces of Christianity in Late Ming China" |
| 2001-2002 |
Göran Malmqvist, Emeritus Chair Professor of Sinology, Stockholm University "Reflections of a Retired European Sinologist" |
| 2000-2001 |
Robert P. Weller, Boston University "Night of the Living Fish: China and the Globalization of Nature" |
| 1999-2000 |
Susan Naquin, Princeton University "Rediscovering Old Peking" |
| 1998-1999 |
Susan Mann, UC Davis "Ink, Brush, Man, Woman: Men’s Writings on Women in Qing Dynasty China" |
| 1997-1998 |
Pei-yi Wu, Columbia University "A Woman Warrior in 13th Century China" |
| 1996-1997 |
James Cahill, UC Berkeley "Towards a Remapping of Chinese Painting" |
| 1995-1996 |
Vivienne Shue, Cornell University "Post-Socialist Poor Relief: Statism, Social Hierarchy, and Chinese Family Values" |
| 1994-1995 |
Richard P. Madsen, UC San Diego "The World of God: Catholicism and Civil Society in China" |
| 1993-1994 |
James Watson, Harvard University "Reinventing the Clan in Post-Mao China: The Wen Tian-Xiang Connection (Hong Kong, Guangdong, Jianxi)" |
| 1992-1993 |
Albert Feuerwerker, University of Michigan "The Question(s) of China’s Twentieth-Century History" |
| 1991-1992 |
Joseph W. Esherick, UC San Diego "Revolution in the Hinterland" |
| 1990-1991 |
Perry Link, Princeton University "Politics and the Chinese Language" |
| 1989-1990 |
Elizabeth J. Perry, University of Washington "The Politics of Labor in Modern China" |
| 1988-1989 |
Benjamin I. Schwartz, Harvard University "Western Categories and Chinese Thought: The Case of Individualism" |
| 1987-1988 |
Frederic Wakeman, UC Berkeley "Memoirs of the Shanghai Station — Dai Li’s Secret Service Among the Barbarians" |
| 1986-1987 |
Charlotte Furth, California State University at Long Beach "Medicine, Gender, and the Status of Women in Late Imperial China" |
| 1985-1986 |
Ezra Vogel, Harvard University "The New Challenge from Japan" |
| 1984-1985 |
Arthur Kleinman, Harvard University "The Social Forces of Mental Illness in China" |
| 1983-1984 |
Howard S. Hibbett, Harvard University "Wit Within Walls: Satire in Edo Fiction" |
| 1982-1983 |
Phillip A. Kuhn, Harvard University "Political Development: Is There a Chinese Approach?" |
| 1981-1982 |
Harry D. Harootunian, University of Chicago "Realms Visible & Invisible, Things Seen & Unseen: Japan’s Modernity & the Transformation of Nativism" |
| 1980-1981 |
Nathan Sivin, University of Pennsylvania "Why the Scientific Revolution Did Not Take Place in China or Did It?" |
| 1979-1980 |
Robert J. Smith, Cornell University "Japanese Village Women: Suye Mura, 1935-36" |
| 1978-1979 |
Kwang-chih Chang, Harvard University "The Chinese Bronze Age: A Modern Synthesis" |
| 1977-1978 |
Edwin O. Reischauer, Harvard University "The Tokugawa Legacy in Modern Japan" |
| 1976-1977 |
Frederick W. Mote, Princeton University "Nanking in 1600" |
| 1975-1976 |
Masao Maruyama "The Structure of ‘matsuri godo’ (matters governmental) in Ancient Japan" |
| 1974-1975 |
G. William Skinner, Stanford University "Family Structure and Politics in Modern China" |
| 1973-1974 |
John Rosenfield, Fogg Art Museum - Harvard University "Ink Painting in Japan" |
| 1972-1973 |
Lawrence Picken, Cambridge University "Music at the Tang Court" |
| 1971-1972 |
Robert Bellah, UC Berkeley "The Ethos of Japanese Fascism: A Comparative View" |
| 1970-1971 |
Ronald Dore, University of Sussex "The Importance of Educational Tradition: Japan and Elsewhere" |
| 1969-1970 |
Ping-ti Ho, University of Chicago "The Chinese Civilization: An Inquiry into the Roots of its Longevity" |
| 1968-1969 |
Peng-yoke Ho, University of Malaya "The System of the Book of Changes and Chinese Science" |
| 1967-1968 |
Marius Jansen, Princeton University "Meiji Restoration" |
| 1966-1967 |
Denis Twitchett, University of London "Commerce in Medieval China" |
| 1965-1966 |
Robert E. Ward, University of Michigan "Political Development: The Case of Japan" |
| 1964-1965 |
Herbert Franke, University of Munich "Sino-Western Contacts under the Mongol Empire" |
| 1963-1964 |
Joseph Levenson, UC Berkeley "Curators & Creators: Chinese Tradition in the Present Age" |
| 1962-1963 |
Donald Keene, Columbia University "Realism and Unreality in Japanese Drama" |
| 1961-1962 | Alexander Soper, Bryn Mawr College |
| 1960-1961 | John K. Fairbank, Harvard University |