Paula Harrell (Ph.D. Columbia University)
is a China-Japan scholar specializing in twentieth century and contemporary history.
Biography
Paula Harrell (Ph.D. Columbia University) is a China-Japan scholar specializing in twentieth century and contemporary history. She has worked for economic development agencies, most notably, for the World Bank during the pioneering stage of Bank-financed efforts to jump start China’s economy through projects in agriculture and education. She served as management specialist on some twenty missions to China, including the Bank’s first mission to define lending for poverty alleviation documented in Strategies for Reducing Poverty in the 1990s (World Bank, 1993). She has taught both Chinese history and Japanese history at the University of Maryland and Dickinson College. Publications include Sowing the Seeds of Change: Chinese Students, Japanese Teachers, 1895-1905 (Stanford University Press, 1992). Harrell is currently completing a book on competing paths to modernity entitled, Asia for the Asians: Japanese Advisers to China, 1900-1930. Top among her other recent scholarly interests are the evolution of China’s new nationalism and Sino-Japanese controversies over the “history problem,” how to come to terms with wartime atrocities and determine a path to reconciliation.
Education
- PhD (1970) Columbia University, History: China and Japan
- East Asian Institute Certificate (1964) Columbia University-EAI, East Asian Languages and Cultures
- MA (1964) Columbia University, Chinese literature
- BA (1961) Smith College, Russian Studies
