'Cultural engineering': The Harvard -Yenching Institute and Chinese humanities, 1924--1951

This dissertation uses Harvard-Yenching Institute (HYI), a private educational foundation, as a case study to explore American export of modern humanities into China following World War I and ending with the Korean War, the cooperation and tensions between American educators and China intellectuals, and the end of American efforts in China. In the Wilsonian moment after World War I, HYI was created to promote China knowledge in the United States and to develop modern humanities in China. HYI attempted to integrate the past and present experiences of both the West and the East, and work out solutions for the problems that societies in transition like China and other Asian countries were facing. After an initial period of notable success in its academic programs, HYI encountered a series of serious challenges, especially from the Anti-Japanese War and a civil war. The Communist military victory finally brought back stability, but it doomed HYI. And the outbreak of the Korean War and the war-related tensions led to the end of HYI and other American cultural and educational enterprises in China.;In this dissertation, I adopt the concept of "cultural engineering" to analyze HYI's programs. Borrowing partly from the idea of "social engineering," and partly from studies on post-colonial nation building in Africa and Asia, I define cultural engineering as a conscious design of strategies, which incorporate elements from China's classical cultural heritage with elements from Western modern practice, to promote China's modernization, especially in educational field. HYI's story reveals that neither "cultural imperialism" argument, including the Orientalist perspective, nor modernization thesis alone can adequately explain American cultural and educational work in China during the early twentieth century. The concept of cultural engineering suggests a new interpretative framework to examine HYI and other American educational and cultural presence in China in the early twentieth century. The concept shows that it is more reasonable to view HYI's programs as a joint project among an American foundation, American educational institutions in China, and Chinese intellectuals to promote Chinese humanities. The joint project was a kind of collaboration involving tensions and adjustments in response to changing situations.