Continuous Variation:Patricia Buckley Ebrey’s Chinese Studies

Patricia Buckley Ebrey’s Chinese studies is characterized by a variety of research fields.Since 1970s she entered Chinese Studies,she has been engaged in Chinese studies for more than 40 years,it has been involved in the study of the Middle Ancient Chinese elite,the study of the history of women in the Song Dynasty and the study of Huizong in art history.The changes of Ebrey’s interest in Chinese studies coincide with the changes of the Paradigm of American Chinese Studies and the transition between generations.With the rise of social history studies in the 1960s and 1970s,Patricia Buckley Ebrey used the research methods of Japanese scholars such as Toyako and Mao Hanguang for reference,mixing the social history method with the anthropological method,a successful case study of the Cui family in Boling:A Perspective of the development of the whole elite class.With the decline of American radical thoughts in the 1980s,a "china-centered" research model began to emerge in American Chinese Studies,at which transformed the family and women of the Song Dynasty,her Research on Women’s history shows the tendency of investigating from the inside of Chinese women,endowing women with the dominant position in the development of society and culture,and initiating the model of the research on women’s history in the new period.In the 1990s,the development of Chinese studies in the United States entered a new stage,influenced by new historical paradigms such as the postmodernism and the new cultural history,emphasizing the changes of narrative and popularity,she made a new interpretation of the image of Song Huizong from the Artistic Research Path,breaking the single negative evaluation of Song Huizong in the traditional research,it offers a useful western project for studying the politics and culture of the Emperor Huizong of Song Dynasty.This article takes Ebrey as a case study,pays close attention to the contents,methods and perspectives of her study of Chinese Studies,and brings her own study of Chinese studies into the process of the study of Chinese Studies in the United States in the second half of the 20th century,recognize its interrelatedness.Throughout her studies on Chinese Studies,the change of interest in her studies has always been closely related to the development of Chinese studies.Ebrey pays attention to the cross-use of social science methods and emphasizes the renewal of research methods and perspectives.Ebrey’s study of Chinese studies can always inspire us in the form of "the other’s perspective",but too much emphasis on the Innovation of Perspective May Cause Ebrey’s study to fall into another extreme.