Wm. Theodore de Bary papers, 1934-2017, bulk 1960-2005
Summary Information
Abstract
At a Glance
- Bib ID:
- 14609113 View CLIO record
- Creator(s):
- De Bary, Wm. Theodore, 1919-2017
- Repository:
- C. V. Starr East Asian Library
- Physical Description:
- 81 Linear Feet (189 document boxes, 3 audio visual boxes)
- Language(s):
- English , Chinese .
- Access:
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The following boxes are currently located offsite: Box #1-192. You will need to request this material from the C.V. Starr East Asian Library at least 5 business days in advance to use the collection.
This collection has no restrictions.
Description
Scope and Contents
The papers of scholar and educator Wm. Theodore de Bary contains a vast range of materials documenting his professional and personal life. Materials in this collection showcase the multi-faceted career of de Bary, who served various teaching, administrative, and leadership roles at Columbia University and beyond.
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Series I: Association, Committee, Board, 1951-2001
Series I contains correspondence, meeting agenda and minutes, proposals, expense and budget notes that showcase de Bary's participation and liaison with various academic and general associations and committees. In particular, de Bary engaged extensively with the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and actively participated in the activities by its Committee on Studies of Chinese Civilization (CCC) and Joint Committee on Chinese Studies (JCCS).
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Series II: Career Files, 1948-2017
Series II contains the spectrum of materials related to de Bary's decades-long career, primarily at Columbia University. Organized alphabetically, Sub-Series II.1 includes all general files, notably those related to the establishment of the Committee on Oriental Studies, departmental affairs within, first, the Department of Chinese and Japanese and later, the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures (EALAC). Additional files shed light on de Bary's roles in various university committees and project groups. Sub-Series II.2 includes administrative files related to the Core Commission and the Core Curriculum. Note that the actual teaching contents of the Core Curriculum are gathered under Series VI: Teaching/Course Materials. Sub-Series II.3 includes general materials on the Heyman Center for the Humanities, which was established during de Bary's term as the Provost. Additional Heyman files may be have been interspersed in the neighboring Sub-Series.
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Series IV: Conferences, Seminars, Symposiums, Workshops, 1955-2005
Organized chronologically, Series IV consists of administrative and program-related files from the myriad academic meetings de Bary attended in more than half a century. Materials include correspondence, conference reports, itineraries, etc. Selected folders might contain manuscripts of the papers presented, but the majority of those has been organized under Sub-Series X.4: Articles, Lectures, Speeches.
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Series V: Correspondence, 1945-2014
Over the course of his decades-long career, Professor de Bary had carried out multiple conventions in organizing correspondences. Sub-Series V.1 includes all titled correspondence folders organized alphabetically. Sub-Series V.2 includes files from primarily between 1970s and early 2000s, grouped by correspondents' initials. Sub-Series V.3 includes early correspondence from primarily between 1959 and 1971, organized chronologically by year. Sub-Series V.4 gathers student recommendations letters written mostly between 1992 and 2002, organized alphabetically. Additional correspondences with students might be located in neighboring Sub-Series, in departmental files, as well as Sub-Series VI.4: Student Thesis Proposals and Dissertations.
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Series VI: Teaching/Course Materials, 1959-2016
Series VI consists of teaching materials, grades and repots, and correspondences from courses in the Core Curriculum and on general East Asian Humanities. Sub-Series VI.1 includes materials on the Faculty Transcultural Workshop/Colloquium Workshop, Nobility and Civility workshops, Nature and Human Nature, and Classics for an Emerging World. Sub-Series VI.2 gathers materials from courses such as East Asian Humanities: Major Works, Oriental Civilizations (East Asian Civilizations), Introduction to Chinese Thought, Introduction to Japanese Thought, Sung-Ming Thought Seminars, etc. Organized by course title and chronologically, the materials provide great insights on the evolution of the course contents. Sub-Series VI.3 includes miscellaneous course and grading files. Sub-Series VI.4 gathers proposals and manuscripts from students, mostly at the PhD level. Additional exchanges with students may be identified in departmental files and in Series V: Correspondence.
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Series VII: Photographs, 1971-2001
Albeit loosely organized and many left unannotated, photographs in Series VII provide meaningful visual evidence of various important occasions in de Bary's professional and personal life. Events. Pictured events include travels to East Asia, conferences, and ceremonies.
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Series IX: Reference Materials, 1934-2014
Series IX.1 includes groupings of mostly handwritten research notes and reference materials on East Asian history and civilizations, collected during research and course preparations. Additional loose materials are gathered under Sub-Series IX.2: Miscellaneous.
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Series X: Writing and Publishing, 1955-2012
Series X collects manuscripts, drafts, and editorial notes of the myriad writing and publishing projects of de Bary. Sub-Series X.1-3 includes chapter-to-chapter drafts and correspondences of the three East Asian Sources volumes that de Bary compiled and edited. Additional correspondences, for example with Irene Bloom on Sources of Chinese Tradition, may be identified in Series V: Correspondence or Sub-Series X.5: Publications. Sub-Series X.5 includes drafts from de Bary's other books as well as administrative and editorial exchanges with presses and publishers about budgets, rights, royalties, etc. Sub-Series X.4, organized chronologically, gathers de Bary's articles, lectures, and speeches. Majority of the articles are on academic subjects; social commentaries and event speeches appear sporadically.
Arrangement
Collection is arranged in 11 series according to subject and material type.
- Series I: Association, Committee, Board, 1951-2001
- Series II: Career Files, 1948-2017
- Sub-Series II.1: Columbia University, General
- Sub-Series II.2: Core Curriculum
- Sub-Series II.3: Heyman Center, 1981-2004
- Sub-Series II.4: University Seminars
- Sub-Series II.5: UCAME (University Committee on Asia & the Middle East)
- Sub-Series II.6: Awards
- Series III: Clippings, 1952-2006
- Series IV: Conferences, Seminars, Symposiums, Workshops, 1955-2005
- Series V: Correspondence, 1945-2014
- Sub-Series V.1: General Correspondence with Individuals and Organizations
- Sub-Series V.2: General Correspondence (Alphabetical)
- Sub-Series V.3: General Correspondence (Chronological)
- Sub-Series V.4: Student Recommendation Letters
- Series VI: Teaching/Course Materials, 1959-2016
- Sub-Series VI.1: Core Corriculum
- Sub-Series VI.2: East Asia
- Sub-Series VI.3: Other Course Materials
- Sub-Series VI.4: Student Thesis Proposals and Dissertations
- Series VII: Photographs, 1971-2001
- Series VIII: Personal Files and Printed Matter, 1960-2014
- Series IX: Reference Materials, 1934-2014
- Series X: Writing and Publishing, 1955-2012
- Sub-Series X.1: Sources of Chinese Tradition
- Sub-Series X.2: Sources of Japanese Tradition
- Sub-Series X.3: Sources of Korean Tradition
- Sub-Series X.4: Articles, Lectures, Speeches
- Sub-Series X.5: Publications
- Series XI: Audio Visual, 1977-2010
Using the Collection
Conditions Governing Access
The following boxes are currently located offsite: Box #1-192. You will need to request this material from the C.V. Starr East Asian Library at least 5 business days in advance to use the collection.
This collection has no restrictions.
Conditions Governing Use
Single photocopies may be made for research purposes. The C.V. Starr East Asian Library maintains ownership of the physical material only. Copyright remains with the creator and his/her heirs. The responsibility to secure copyright permission rests with the patron.
Preferred Citation
Identification of specific item, Date (if known); Wm. Theodore de Bary papers; Box and Folder; C.V. Starr East Asian Library, Columbia University Libraries.
Related Materials
Heyman Center for the Humanities records, 1974-1997; University Lectures records, 1972-2016; Office of the Provost and the Vice-President for Academic Affairs records, 1939-2006 bulk 1956-2003; Core Curriculum records, 1937-2020, bulk 1937-1995; Columbia College Records, 1875-2022, bulk 1969-1987; University Archives, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Gift of Brett de Bary Nee, 2018
About the Finding Aid / Processing Information
Columbia University Libraries, C. V. Starr East Asian Library
Processing Information
Processed by Rita Wang, 2019-2020, and by Evian Yiyun Pan, 2023
Biographical / Historical
William Theodore "Ted" de Bary (August 9, 1919, The Bronx, New York – July 14, 2017, Tappan, New Jersey) was a pioneering scholar and educator of Asian humanities. Growing up in Leonia, New York, de Bary entered Columbia University as an undergraduate in 1937. In 1941, de Bary began graduate studies in Chinese at Harvard University. The following year he was recruited by the U.S. Navy to undergo intensive training in Japanese and serve as an intelligence officer in the Pacific Theatre of World War II. He achieved the rank of Lieutenant Commander and worked briefly for the Office of Naval Intelligence in 1946. His experiences in East Asia during the war persuaded him of the importance of continuing to learn from East Asian cultures. In 1947, de Bary left the military and returned to Columbia for graduate study in Chinese, and received an M.A. in Japanese studies in 1948. In 1949, de Bary was a Fulbright fellow at Beijing University. Together with his close friend Donald Keene, he studied under Ryusaku Tsunoda at Columbia. De Bary gained his PhD in 1953 with a dissertation titled "A Plan for the Prince: the Ming-I Tai-Fang Lu of Huang Tsung-His," and began teaching at Columbia immediately afterwards.
During his decades-long professorship, de Bary essentially established the field of Neo-Confucian Studies with such books as Self and Society in Ming Thought (1970) and the Unfolding of Neo-Confucianism (1975). He was also President of the Association of Asian Studies from 1969 to 1970. At Columbia, De Bary chaired the Department of East Asian Languages and Culture between 1960 and 1966. He was active in faculty intervention during the protests of 1968, and served as the Executive Vice President of Academic Affairs and Provost from 1971 to 1978. He played a part in reshaping the Core Curriculum of Columbia College to include Great Books and classes devoted to non-Western civilizations. De Bary was also known for rarely missing a Columbia Lions football game.
As a recognized educator, de Bary has won Columbia's Great Teacher Award in 1969, its Lionel Trilling Book Award in 1983, the Mark Van Doren Award for Great Teaching in 1987, the Philolexian Award for Distinguished Literary Achievement. De Bary served as the director of the Heyman Center for the Humanities and continued teaching until several months before his death in 2017 at the age of 97.
Subject Headings
The subject headings listed below are found in this collection. Links below allow searches for other collections at Columbia University, through CLIO, the catalog for Columbia University Libraries, and through ArchiveGRID, a catalog that allows users to search the holdings of multiple research libraries and archives.
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