James Peter Geiss (14 March 1950 – 19 December 2000) was an American scholar who published several books and articles on

Chinese history The history of China spans several millennia across a wide geographical area. Each region now considered part of the Chinese world has experienced periods of unity, fracture, prosperity, and strife. Chinese civilization first emerged in the Y ...

, specifically on the

Ming dynasty The Ming dynasty, officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming was the last imperial dynasty of ...

(1368-1644 CE). A graduate of

Williams College Williams College is a Private college, private liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts, United States. It was established as a men's college in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim ...

and

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

, he completed his doctoral dissertation, ''Peking under the Ming (1368-1644)'' in 1979. He published two chapters in volume 7 of '' The Cambridge History of China'', focusing on the history of the Ming dynasty. His contributions "The Cheng-Te Reign" and "The Chia-Ching Reign" (1988) were complemented by the more specialized studies "On the significance of the reign title Chia-ching" (1990) and "The during the Cheng-te reign" (1987), both in ''Ming Studies''. He published the latter in the Chinese language as "Ming Wuzong yu Baofang" (明武宗与豹房, 1988) in the '' Palace Museum Journal'' (故宫博物院院刊), an article taken very seriously by Chinese scholars. He collaborated wit
Chu Hung-lam
to translate original Chinese texts for Louise Levathes's popular book, '' When China Ruled the Seas'' (1994) . With Naiying Yuan and Haitao Tang, he co-authored several textbooks on

classical Chinese Classical Chinese is the language in which the classics of Chinese literature were written, from . For millennia thereafter, the written Chinese used in these works was imitated and iterated upon by scholars in a form now called Literary ...

, notably ''The Grammar of Classical Chinese: A Basic Introduction'', ''Classical Chinese: A Basic Reader'' (1994), ''Readings in Classical Chinese Poetry and Prose'' (1994), ''Selections from Classical Chinese Historical Texts'' (1993), and ''Selections from Classical Chinese Philosophical Texts'' (1993). After his death in 2004 the

Princeton University Press Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial ...

published new versions of all volumes as ''Classical Chinese: A Basic Reader'', revised and updated by Geiss's coauthors Yuan and Tang. Th
James P. Geiss Foundation
a not-for-profit organization dedicated to support research in Ming studies, was established in his honor in 2001.

External links

Amazon link to Classical Chinese: A Basic Reader
1950 births 2000 deaths American sinologists 20th-century American historians American male non-fiction writers 20th-century American male writers {{US-historian-stub