Talk:Guy Alitto

Possible references

https://news.uchicago.edu/story/chinese-film-features-prof-guy-alitto-his-work-forgotten-philosopher-political-figure - “University of Chicago historian and well-known scholar in China” - part of The Last Confucian and Me, “which has been widely viewed across China as part of a China Central TV series on foreigners who have made an impact on the country” - “Alitto’s research helped to restore Liang’s rightful historical and national prominence” after the scholar had fallen out of favor after challenging Mao Zedong. - wrote The Last Confucian: Liang Shu-ming and the Chinese Dilemma of Modernity (1979) - “Alitto… has excellent command of Mandari n and became interested in China during a time of historic changes.” Documentary starts in his 1960s graduate school days in Taiwan, - he was appointed “interpreter for the first official Chinese delegations visiting the United States in 1972, after Nixon’s visit to China.” - did “field work in the 1980s and 1990s...” in a village

http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2013-01/25/content_16173563.htm - great picture! - professor of history at Uchicago - Alitto’s Chinese name is Ai Kai, “optimistic and easily contented”, which he got from his graduate adviser - In the 1960s, there was little academic work on China

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1980/4/5/the-forgotten-shadow-pbwbith-his-biography/ (1980, by MIT academic) - wrote biography of “virtually unknown (to Americans at least) Liang Shu-ming” - Crimson argues that Alitto makes Liang too important; also, makes mistake of examining Liang’s early history through a Western psychiatric lens

\check http://www.bjreview.com.cn/business/txt/2008-12/22/content_171343.htm - “Zouping County in east China's Shandong Province some 22 years ago….as an expert with the Committee on Scholarly Communication with China under the U.S. National Academy of Sciences” → 1986 - This was the “first rural area opened to foreign scholars” - Alitto “spent nearly a month interviewing local people for firsthand research” - “’Wealth brings freedom,’ Alitto said.”

https://news.uchicago.edu/story/uchicago-host-conference-examining-fundamental-questions-about-confucianism - organized an event on “the renewed interest in Confucianism in China”

http://www.china.org.cn/world/2012-09/29/content_26674734.htm /check - "As a historian, I confirm the Chinese government's strong claim of jurisdiction over the Diaoyu Islands," he said. - "I had my students do research on these islands some years ago and came to the same historical conclusion," Alitto added, referring to the white paper's confirmation that the Diaoyu Islands belong to China.

/check http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2011-12/17/content_14280364.htm - Guy Alitto, an expert with the University of Chicago, explored the development of popular religions in Chinese history, and concluded that the Falungong "represents more of a rupture than a continuity with Chinese religious traditions", despite some of its parallels.

http://english.cri.cn/6909/2011/10/28/2743s664935.htm - Guy Allito, history professor at the University of Chicago, said Chinese culture is "flexible, all-inclusive and open to diverse cultures," thus it has unique advantages to cope with "moral corruption." - he believes in Conficianism-based Chinese culture - believes C’ism could provide antidote to the corrupting influence of modernization

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016twosession/2016-03/04/content_23731043.htm - “cherished research project that allowed 87 US academics to visit Zouping county in Shandong between 1987 and 1991; sometimes the academics stayed for months to research issues ranging from local finance to the status of women, history to animal husbandry.” - “Alitto's last visit to Zouping occurred in 2012” → used to note - “had acted as an interpreter for the first official Chinese delegation to the US in 1972 in the wake of president Richard Nixon's visit to China.” - became a usual figure “who ‘could walk freely through almost every door in any village’” - “Alitto's favorite method involved casual chats with interviewees, many in their 60s and 70s, as they sat on wooden stools in a sun-drenched front yard.” - “Alitto's communication skills allowed him to broach sensitive topics. ‘I wanted to know more about the Great Famine between 1959 and 1961. But given the sensitivity of the issue, few people spoke freely about it,’ he said. ‘So I mentioned not the Great Famine, but a locust plague that had ravaged Zouping in the 1920s.’” - “In 1987, Alitto invited Feng Yongxi to dinner at his house when the official was a member of the first delegation from Zouping to visit Chicago.” Feng Yongxi-→ Party chief of Fengjiacun

https://www.nytimes.com/1979/08/12/archives/on-the-making-of-modern-china-china-the-china-difference-china-the.html?searchResultPosition=3 - wrote about Liang Shuming - “this book has the good fortune that sometimes comes unasked to good scholarship: It is intensely timely in that it relates directly to China’s current problems, and highlights many of the intellectual and social conundrums that confront China’s present leadership.”

https://www.nytimes.com/1975/05/11/archives/its-action-but-is-it-affirmative-applying-for-two-jobs-he-lost-out.html?searchResultPosition=2 - “However, since it was until recently illegal to inquire into a student's or an employe's ethnicity, no such statistics were available for the number of Ph.D.'s earned by blacks, Orientals, American Indians, or individuals with Spanish surnames.” - There was a huge battle (and mess) over initiation of affirmative action policies at Berkeley - received Ph.D. in Chinese history from Harvard - he is third-generation Italian-American - was a student of John Fairbank - Fairbank suggested he wait until finishing his dissertation to do the job-hunt - After two jobs went to women not yet done with their dissertations, Alitto had to take a “part-time job in a provincial college in Taiwan.” - Alitto characterized this in 1975 as an example of reverse-discrimination, arguing that they were less qualified on account of their unfinished dissertations

Chinese sources?

I highly suspect that there is a lot more available regarding Alitto in Chinese-language sources. Examples such as the Baidu page on Alitto have quite a lot more material (https://baike.baidu.com/item/艾恺). Jlevi (talk) 21:33, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

A comment that won't make it to the article

In his review of Alitto's book The Last Confucian, reviewer mainzigartig notes that "Guy Alitto, the author, looks like some kind of cross between the Pringles guy and the Monopoly guy." Jlevi (talk) 00:52, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

References