Anthony E. Clark, an associate professor of history at Whitworth University, has been selected as one of seven scholars worldwide to receive the 2012-13 National Endowment for the Humanities/American Council of Learned Societies Grant, according to a news release.
“I am honored and grateful to have received this support so I can consult important archives in northern China and complete my current book project on Sino-missionary relations in Shanxi,” says Clark.
Through the grant, he will conduct research at the famous Sino-Western Library at The Beijing Center, located at the University of International Business and Economics. While there he will consult Chinese archives to help finish a draft of his monograph, “Friars, Fairies, and the War of Immortals: China’s Heavenly Battle on the Earthly Plains of Shanxi.” According to a news release the book brings to light the personal lives of several European Franciscan and Chinese women at Shanxi on the eve of the July 9, 1900, “Taiyuan Incident.”
In addition to allowing Clark to conduct research, the grant will fund his travel to other areas in China, where he will gather information about missionary activities during the late-Qing dynasty, at the end of the 19th century. He will also give invited lectures on his work at scholarly meetings in the cities of Hangzhou and Hong Kong.
Clark, who joined the Whitworth faculty in 2009, holds a Ph.D. from the University of Oregon, where he also earned his bachelor's degree. He has also pursued language, historical literature and cultural studies at the Central University for Nationalities, in Beijing; the Alliance Française, in Paris; and the National Taiwan Normal University and the Taipei Language Institute, both in Taipei, Taiwan.
