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Edward H. Hume

Photo of 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

2023-2024

Timothy Cheek, Professor and Louis Cha Chair in Chinese Research, University of British Columbia

"Compacts, Cultivation, and Campaigns: Lives of the Pedagogical State in Modern China"

2022-2023

Nicolas Standaert, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

"Looking at China from the Periphery: The Interconnected History of the Chinese Gazette in the Eighteenth Century"

2021-2022

Rana Mitter, University of Oxford

"A Kite Flies Against the Wind: Internationalism, Identity, and Ideology in the Shaping of Postwar China, and the Legacy for Today"

2019-2020

Gail Hershatter, UC Santa Cruz

"Homebound: One Woman’s Chinese Revolution, 1900-1975"

2018-2019

Thomas J. Christensen, Columbia University

"China’s Rise and the Security of East Asia"

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

"Returning to the High Tang"

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