M. Pearson

Margaret J. Pearson PH. D. majored in history at Smith College. She earned a Master’s Degree in East Asian Studies and passed her Ph.D. exams in History at the University of Washington in Seattle. During the next two years, she read Chinese language and philosophy at the Inter-University Center at National Taiwan University in Taipei. She returned to Seattle, where she began her dissertation on the Comments of a Recluse by Wang Fu. She began teaching Chinese history to college students at the New School for Social Research, Pace University, and Marymount Manhattan College, while also working to place refugees with sponsor families. She then started teaching Chinese History at Skidmore College in 1980. She has directed the Asian Studies Program and chaired the History Department and the University Seminar on Traditional China at Columbia University. For over twenty-five years, Professor Pearson taught all Chinese and Japanese history, from beginnings to the present. She now specializes in early Chinese intellectual history and the life lessons it continues to offer to the intelligent reader.