Richard C. Rudolph
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Richard Casper Rudolph; (May 21, 1909 - April 9, 2003) was an American professor of Chinese
Literature Literature is any collection of Writing, written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, Play (theatre), plays, and poetry, poems. It includes both print and Electroni ...
and
Archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...
at the
University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...
. According to
Lothar von Falkenhausen Lothar von Falkenhausen (born June 6, 1959) is a German-American archaeologist and art historian specializing in the Chinese Bronze Age. After receiving a PhD in anthropology at Harvard, he briefly taught at Stanford and the University of Califor ...
, "He was one of the first generation of serious China scholars trained in the United States."


Early life and education

Rudolph was born in San Francisco three years after the 1906 earthquake that devastated the city. He developed a deep interest in China as a child. He was raised by his grandmother in poverty, living at one point in a water tower and then later in a dirt walled basement as he worked his way through his university education, which took him 14 years. He received his BA in Foreign Trade in 1932, his MA in 1936, and his PhD in Chinese literature in 1942, all at
UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkele ...
. He studied with sinologists Ferdinand Lessing and
Peter Boodberg Peter Alexis Boodberg (born Pyotr Alekseyevich von Budberg; 8 April 1903 – 29 June 1972) was a Russian-American scholar, linguist, and sinologist who taught at the University of California, Berkeley for 40 years. Boodberg was influential in ...
at Berkeley.


Career

Rudolph was an instructor of Chinese at the
University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...
from 1937 to 1940, working under
Herrlee G. Creel Herrlee Glessner Creel (January 19, 1905June 1, 1994) was an American Sinologist and philosopher who specialized in Chinese philosophy and history, and a professor of Chinese at the University of Chicago for nearly 40 years. A prolific author, on ...
. With Creel and Chang Tsung-Ch'ien, he co-authored the three volume textbook ''Literary Chinese by the Inductive Method,'' published in 1938, 1939 and 1952 by the
University of Chicago Press The University of Chicago Press is the university press of the University of Chicago, a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. It is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It pu ...
. During World War II, Rudolph headed the Chinese language section of the U.S. Navy Language School at the
University of Colorado Boulder The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado, United States. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University o ...
from 1943 to 1945, where he worked with Ensho Ashikaga and Y. C. Chu who would later come to UCLA. From 1945 to 1947, he served as assistant professor of Chinese studies at the
University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...
and also acting director of and assistant keeper of Far Eastern Antiquities at the
Royal Ontario Museum The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is a museum of art, world culture and natural history in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is one of the largest museums in North America and the largest in Canada. It attracts more than one million visitors every year ...
of Archaeology. That experience instilled in him an interest in ancient books, calligraphy, paintings, and artifacts. Offered his choice in 1947 of either a position at UC Berkeley or the opportunity to found a new department of Oriental Languages at UCLA, he chose the latter and remained at UCLA throughout his remainder of his career. After coming to UCLA, Rudolph was awarded a
Fulbright Program The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States cultural exchange programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people ...
scholarship for research in China during the culminating years of its revolution. Rudolph's first trip to China was in 1948–49, just before the country largely closed to outsiders as a result of the Communist Revolution. Rudolph was in China during a time of political chaos during the final months of the
Chinese Civil War The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang-led Nationalist government, government of the Republic of China (1912–1949), Republic of China and the forces of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Armed conflict continued intermitt ...
. He visited various big cities such as
Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...
and
Chengdu Chengdu; Sichuanese dialects, Sichuanese pronunciation: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: ; Chinese postal romanization, previously Romanization of Chinese, romanized as Chengtu. is the capital city of the Chinese province of Sichuan. With a ...
, avoiding the fighting between the Communist and Nationalist armies. After the Communists took control of the large cities, Rudolph went through bookstores, purchasing a large number of old woodblock printed reference works. He left China in June 1949, stopping in Japan on his way home for additional book purchases. His second trip in 1973 was as part of the first group of American scholars to enter China just before the normalization of relations. He was fluent in Classical Chinese, Mandarin,
Manchu The Manchus (; ) are a Tungusic peoples, Tungusic East Asian people, East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized Ethnic minorities in China, ethnic minority in China and the people from wh ...
, Mongolian, Classical Japanese, modern Japanese, German, French, Italian and Spanish and had begun learning Tibetan and Russian. When he first arrived at UCLA, the university library possessed only a single volume in Chinese, a telephone directory. By the end of that research year, it had 10,000—some of them rare, many of them important, all of them needed—the core of a functioning research library that is currently among the top ten East Asian libraries in the U.S, (today named the Richard C. Rudolph East Asian Library). As of its 75th anniversary in 2024, the Rudolph Library held over 800,000 books and other items. A true bibliophile, he was never happier than when examining a rare book or manuscript—or a number of works by some famous Chinese calligrapher, separated for centuries and now brought together again by him after years of tireless searching—unless it was when he was showing someone else these latest finds. He was always as well acquainted with the campus librarians as he was with his fellow scholars. Rudolph was best known for his work on the tomb reliefs of the
Western Han The Han dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China (202 BC9 AD, 25–220 AD) established by Liu Bang and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–206 BC) and a warring int ...
(''Han Tomb Art of West China''). He also worked on a wide range of interests including the history of Chinese printing (''A Chinese Printing Manual''), ancient Chinese archaeology, ancient Chinese
historiography Historiography is the study of the methods used by historians in developing history as an academic discipline. By extension, the term ":wikt:historiography, historiography" is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiog ...
, literature, bronzes, tomb objects, tomb iconography, the salt industry, botanical works, medicine, riddles and games, the application of carbon dating to ancient Chinese artifacts, Chinese porcelain in Mexico, early (14th century) Italians in China, Manchu studies, Japanese maps, and the work in Japan of the Swedish naturalist and physician
Carl Peter Thunberg Carl Peter Thunberg, also known as Karl Peter von Thunberg, Carl Pehr Thunberg, or Carl Per Thunberg (11 November 1743 – 8 August 1828), was a Sweden, Swedish Natural history, naturalist and an Apostles of Linnaeus, "apostle" of Carl Linnaeus ...
in 1775 and 1776. One of the few Western scholars at the time who kept systematically abreast of ongoing archaeological efforts in China, he was asked to direct the
American Council of Learned Societies The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) is a private, nonprofit federation of 75 scholarly organizations in the humanities and related social sciences founded in 1919. It is best known for its fellowship competitions which provide a ra ...
' project “Abstracts of Chinese Archaeology” from 1968 to 1973. Before his retirement in 1976, he served as departmental chair for sixteen years and sat on several editorial boards. He was awarded two
Guggenheim fellowships Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...
(plus one renewal), two Fulbright fellowships (plus one renewal), a Fulbright Distinguished Senior Scholar Award, two
American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS) is an American scholarly organization and learned society founded in 1743 in Philadelphia that promotes knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences through research, professional meetings, publicat ...
Grants, a University of California Humanities Institute Award, a Ford Foundation Grant, and an ACLS fellowship. But the honor that he was most proud of was when, in 1981, the UCLA Oriental Library was renamed the Richard C. Rudolph Oriental Library in acknowledgment of his efforts in building the collection. The name was changed to the Richard C. Rudolph East Asian Library in 1990. After retiring, Rudolph took up the direction of the University of California Education Abroad Program and continued his research. He became increasingly absorbed with collecting ancient maps, paintings, printing blocks, manuscripts, rare books and porcelain, focusing especially on Chinese and Japanese printing, medicine, botany, physiology, and the reception of Western science by the East. Failing eyesight became a problem for him, as did a variety of life-threatening but largely passing ailments.


Personal life

He met Mary Alice Potter at the University of Colorado Boulder, and they were married for 59 years. They had three children, Richard C. Rudolph Jr., Conrad Rudolph, and Deborah Rudolph.


Publications

A great part of this list is based on the article ''"A List of Publications of Richard C. Rudolph up to 1978"''''.''


1938

* Tsung-Ch’ien, C., & Rudolph, R. C. (1938). ''Literary Chinese by the Inductive Method: Vol.'' ''I. The Hsiao Ching.'' (H. Glessner Creel, Ed.). University of Chicago Press.


1939

* Tsung-Ch’ien, C., & Rudolph, R. C. (1939). ''Literary Chinese by the Inductive Method: Vol. II. Selections from the Lun Yü.'' (H. Glessner Creel, Ed.). University of Chicago Press.


1940

* Rudolph, Richard C. (1940). "Emu Tanggo Orin Sakda-i Gisun Sarkiyan, An Unedited Manchu Manuscript." In ''Journal of the American Oriental Society'', 60 , no. 4: 554--563. American Oriental Society.


1942

* Rudolph, Richard C. (January 1942). “Notes on the Riddle in China.” In ''California Folklore Quarterly'' 1, no. 1: 65– 82.


1946

* Rudolph, Richard C. (1946). "A Reversed Chinese Art Term." In ''Journal of the American Oriental Society'', 66 , no. 1: 15-17. American Oriental Society.


1947

* Rudolph, Richard C. (1947). “Early Chinese References to Fossil Fishes.” In ''Isis,'' 36: 155.


1948

* Rudolph, Richard C. (1948). "Dynastic. Booty: an Altered Chinese Bronze,". In ''Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies'', 11:174-180. * Rudolph, Richard C. (1948). “The Jumar in China,” In ''Isis,'' 40: 35-37.


1950

* Rudolph, R. C. (1950). The Antiquity of t’ou hu. ''Antiquity'', ''24''(96), 175–178. doi:10.1017/S0003598X00023346 * Rudolph, R. C. (1950). Han Tomb Reliefs from Szechwan. ''Archives of the Chinese Art Society of America'', ''4'', 29–38. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20066926


1951

* Rudolph, R. (1951). ''Han Tomb Art of West China: A Collection of First-and Second-Century Reliefs''. Berkeley: University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520351707


1952

* Tsung-Ch’ien, C., & Rudolph, R. C. (1952). ''Literary Chinese by the Inductive Method: Vol. III. The Mencius, Books I-III.'' (H. Glessner Creel, Ed.). University of Chicago Press.


References


Bibliography

* ed. Kenneth D. Klein, ''Creating an Oriental Languages Department and Library'', UCLA Oral History Program (Los Angeles 1985). * "Book Buying in China 1948-49: An Interview with Richard C. Rudolph," ''Journal of Asian Culture'' 6 (1982) 3-18. * ed. Jun Suzuki and Mihoko Miki, "Richard C. Rudolph East Asian Library and Japanese Rare Books," ''Catalog of Rare Japanese Materials at the University of California, Los Angeles'' (Richard C. Rudolph East Asian Library Bibliographic Series no. 4, pp. xxxi-xxxiv. *
Obituary Richard Casper Rudolph
" ''The Journal of Asian Studies'' 62 (2003) 1031-1033. * "A List of Publications of Richard C. Rudolph up to 1978," ''Monumenta Serica: Journal of Oriental Studies'' 34 (1979-1980) pp. i-v. * "The Circle Closed: UCLA's Chinese Holdings Are Doubled," ''UCLA Librarian'' 18 (February 1965) pp. 31–32. {{DEFAULTSORT:Rudolph, Richard 1909 births 2003 deaths University of California, Los Angeles faculty University of Colorado faculty American sinologists