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School of Modern Languages & Cultures

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Professor Paul Bailey

Professor in the Department of History
Telephone: +44 (0) 191 33 41069
Room number: 207

Contact Professor Paul Bailey (email at paul.bailey@durham.ac.uk)

Paul J Bailey specialises in the social and cultural history of modern China. A graduate of Chinese at Leeds University, he obtained an MA in Chinese and Japanese history and politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London), and did his doctorate at the University of British Columbia, Canada, where he was also a teaching assistant and the recipient of a Killam doctoral fellowship.While doing his doctorate he spent a year (1980-1981) at Beijing University, China, as a British Council postgraduate scholar. During his time in China he was also a part-time 'stringer' for United Press International, reporting on local news and translating items from the Chinese press.He formerly taught at Lingnan College (Hong Kong)(teaching English language and literature), School of Oriental Studies (University of Durham) (teaching Chinese literary and philosophical texts,Chinese civilisation, modern Chinese history) , Sevenoaks School (teaching European and American history), and the University of Edinburgh (teaching elementary Chinese and Japanese, Chinese literary and historical texts, Chinese civilisation, modern Chinese history, modern Vietnamese history, modern Japanese history). He was a Visiting Research Fellow at National Taiwan University and at the Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, and has twice been a British Academy exchange scholar in China. He has published monographs on Chinese gender and educational history as well as narrative histories of modern and contemporary East Asia. His research has been funded by grants from the Leverhulme Trust, British Academy, AHRB/AHRC, Carnegie Trust, Japan Foundation, and the British Universities China Committee. He is currently completing a study of Chinese workers in World War One France, entitled The Sino-French Connection, while his next research project will be an exploration of gender, crime and nation-building in twentieth century China. Future research projects  are (1) Creating Difference: Discursive and Visual Representations of Foreign Women in Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Women's Magazines (2) A Genealogy of Chinese Overseas Labour: From "Coolie" to "Transnational Agent" (19th-21st Centuries) (3) Communism and Feminism in Early Twentieth-Century China: The Life and Times  of Xiang Jingyu (1895-1928) (4) History, Myth and Identity in Chinese and Japanese Cinema. From academic year 2011-2012 he will be Co- Director of the Chinese Studies degree programme at Durham.

Research Interests

  • Gender in twentieth century China
  • Educational thought and practice in twentieth century China
  • Sino-French interaction in the 19th and 20th centuries
  • Cinema and Chinese modernity

Selected Publications

Books: authored

  • 2012 Women and Gender in Twentieth-Century China, Palgrave Macmillan, 202 pp.
  • 2007 Gender and Education in China: Gender Discourses and Women’s Schooling in the Early Twentieth Century, London: Routledge Curzon, ix+246 (Reissued in paperback in 2012) pp.
  • 2001 China in the Twentieth Century, Oxford: Blackwell new and expanded ed, viii+286 pp (translated into Spanish: China en el siglo XX, Barcelona:Ariel, 2002) ) pp.
  • 1998 Strengthen the Country and Enrich the People: The Reform Writings of Ma Jianzhong (1845-1900), Richmond: Curzon, 107 pp.
  • 1996 Postwar Japan: 1945 to the Present, Oxford: Blackwell, xv+205 pp.
  • 1993 Trans.(from the French)., D.Hoizey, A History of Chinese Medicine, Edinburgh university press, 224 pp.
  • 1990 Reform the People: Changing Attitudes Towards Popular Education in Early Twentieth Century China, Edinburgh University Press, viii+296 pp.
  • 1988 Trans.(from the French) and intro., M.Bastid, Educational Reform in Early Twentieth Century China, Ann Arbor: Michigan University Center for Chinese Studies, xx+331 pp.

Books: edited

  • 2012 (co-edited with D.Gimpel & B.Nielsen) Creative Spaces: Seeking the Dynamics of Change in China, Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Press, 272 pp.

Edited works: contributions

  • Published 'Annual review of books published on China and Japan', in K. Laybourn (ed.), Annual Bulletin of Historical Literature, vols 75-94 (1991-2010), Blackwell: Oxford.

Essays in edited volumes

  • 2012 ''Cultural Interaction, Globalisation and “Creative Spaces” in the Early Twentieth Century: Li Shizeng (1881-1973) and the Chinese Francophile “Lobby”’', in Denise Gimpel,, Bent Nielsen, & Paul Bailey (eds.), Creative Spaces: Seeking the Dynamics of Change in China, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Press, pp. 66-91
  • 2012 ''Discipline, Resistance et “Face” le cas des Huagong (travailleurs chinois d'outre-mer)durant la Premiere Guerre Mondiale en France'', in Ma Li (ed.), Les travailleurs chinois en France dans la Première Guerre mondiale, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, pp. 247-264
  • 2012 'Cultural Connections in a New Global Space: Li Shizeng and the Chinese Francophile Project in the Early Twentieth Century', in Peiyin Lin & Weipin Tsai (eds.), Print, Profit and Perception: Information Production and Knowledge Transmission in Chinese Societies 1895-1949, London: Routledge.
  • 2011 '"An Army of Workers” Chinese Indentured Labour in First World War France', in S. Das (ed.), Race, Empire and First World War Writing, Cambridge University Press, pp. 35-52
  • 2010 'The Sino-French Connection and Chinese Indentured Labour in World War One France', in Hong Shen (ed.), When China Meets the West, Hangzhou: Zhejiang University Press, pp. 238-253
  • 2009 'Chinese Contract Workers in World War One: The Larger Context', in Zhang Jianguo (ed.), Chinese Labourers and the First World War, Jinan: Shandong University Press, pp. 3-18
  • 2009 'Semi-Colonialism and Cultural Interaction: Chinese Indentured Labour in World War One France and the Sino-French Connection', in F. Assandri & D. Martins (eds.), From Early Tang Court Debates to China’s Peaceful Rise, Amsterdam University Press, pp. 111-120
  • 2003 '"Unharnessed Fillies": Discourse on the “Modern” Female Student in Early twentieth Century China', in Lo Jiu-jung & Lu Miaw-fen (eds.), Women and Culture in Modern China (1600-1950), Academia Sinica, pp. 327-357
  • 2001 'Active Citizen or Efficient Housewife? The Debate over Women’s Education in Early Twentieth Century China', in G.Peterson, R.Hayhoe & Yongling Lu (eds.), Education, Culture and Identity in Twentieth Century China, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, pp. 318-347
  • 2000 'From Shandong to the Somme: Chinese Indentured Labour in France during World War One', in A. Kershen (ed.), Language, Labour and Migration, Aldershot: Ashgate Press, pp. 179-196
  • 1990 ''The Sino-French Connection 1902-1928'', in D. Goodman (ed.), China and the West: Ideas and Activists, Manchester University Press, pp. 75-102

Journal papers: academic

  • 2011 'The Sino-French Connection and World War One', Journal of the British Association of Chinese Studies 1, pp. 1-19
  • 2006 '”Women Behaving Badly” Crime, Gender and Transgressive Behaviour in Early Twentieth Century China', Nan Nu: Men, Women and Gender in Early and Imperial China 8.1, pp. 156-197 (translated into Chinese in Nuxue xuezhi, no.25, June 2008, pp.165-212)
  • 2004 'Modernising Conservatism in Early Twentieth Century China: The Discourse and Practice of Women’s Education', European Journal of East Asian Studies 3.2, pp. 1-25 (translated into Chinese, in Zhongguo jiaoyu:yanjiu yu pinglun, no.4, 2003, pp.1-25)
  • 1992 'Voltaire and Confucius: French Attitudes towards China in the Early Twentieth Century', History of European Ideas 14.6, pp. 817-837
  • 1988 'The Chinese Work-Study Movement in France', China Quarterly no.115, pp. 441-461

Other publications: research

  • 1994 'Chinese Cinema Yesterday and Today’', China Now no.151, pp. 8-11
  • 1988 'The Life and Times of Puyi, China’s Last Emperor', Britain-China Newsletter no.37, pp. 10-15
  • 1987 'China and the French Revolution', Bulletin of the British Association of Chinese Studies pp. 17-26

Short Works

  • 2010 '‘Education 1800-1949’; ‘Socialization and Pedagogy’; ‘Filial Piety’', Encyclopedia of Modern China vol.1, pp.461-466, vol.2, pp.36-38, vol.3, pp.457-459.
  • 1998 'Recruitment of Chinese Workers by Britain and France’; ‘Chinese Students in America in the late 19th and Early 20th Centuries’; ‘The Chinese Work-Study Movement in France’; ‘Chinese Workers in Russia 1860s-1917’; ‘Chinese Students in Japan in the Early 20th Century’', Encyclopedia of Chinese Overseas pp. 64-65, 263, 318, 330, 335
  • 1993 '300 entries on Chinese and Japanese historical figures and events', Chambers Dictionary of World History pp.
  • 1993 'Maoism', Blackwell Dictionary of Twentieth Century Social Thought pp. 355-358

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