N. Harry Rothschild

Biography

Dr. Rothschild’s teaching career spans nearly a quarter of a century, beginning as a K-12 substitute in the hills of western Maine after he graduated from Harvard University in 1992 with a B.A. in East Asian Language and Civilizations and cleverly decided to write a novel on bronzecasting and kingship in Shang China in his parents’ basement. In the mid-90s, he taught History and Political Geography at Hebron Academy. Currently, he is a professor of Asian History here at the University of North Florida, where he has worked since receiving a Ph.D. in Chinese History from Brown University in 2003. His courses include, but are not limited to: Women and Gender in East Asia, Asian Art and Culture, Introduction to Asia, Traditional China, Modern China, Contemporary, China, Japanese Civilization, and a pair of seminars: “Tang China, The Empire is Open to All” and “Women and Gender in China, yesterday and Today.”   Nearly five years of living and working in the People’s Republic of China have enriched both Dr. Rothschild’s teaching and his research. From 1988 to 1990, he lived, studied Mandarin, and worked in Beijing. On a Fulbright grant in 2000–01, he researched at Peking University’s Institute for Research of Middle Antiquity, examining largely untapped epigraphic sources like the Qian-Tang Museum of Funerary Plaques outside Luoyang and combing archival sources at the National Library. In 2012-13, he spent a sabbatical year at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China.    The focus of Dr. Rothschild’s dissertation and ongoing research is Wu Zhao (624-705), better known as Wu Zetian or Empress Wu. His most recent book Emperor Wu Zhao and her Pantheon of Devis, Divinities, and Dynastic Mothers (Columbia University Press, 2015; see link) examines the female emperor’s sustained effort to deploy language, symbol, and ideology to harness the cultural resonance, maternal force, divine energy, and historical weight of a broad-base of female exemplars and divinities—Buddhist devis, Confucian exemplars, Daoist immortals, and mythic goddesses—to establish cultural, religious, and political legitimacy. Tapping into powerful subterranean reservoirs of female power, Wu Zhao built a pantheon of female divinities carefully calibrated to meet her needs at court. This pageant of goddesses and eminent women was promoted in scripted rhetoric, reinforced through poetry, celebrated in theatrical productions, and inscribed on steles. This work follows his first book, a biography of the female ruler titled Wu Zhao, China’s Only Female Emperor (Longman World Biography Series, 2008).  In addition, he has published an array of more than a dozen essays analyzing various facets of Wu Zhao’s sovereignty—her connection to apocalyptic Buddhism, her utilization of avian symbolism, her deft manipulation of language in choosing reign names, and the significance of her rapport with non-Chinese subjects—in Italian, Korean, Chinese and American journals. Recent essays have also examined other epiphenomena in early Tang history: one examines contested narratives of the environmental and political consequences of a locust infestation in 715-6 and another looks at escalating rhetoric opposing performances of a Sogdian dramas in the early eighth century after Wu Zhao’s ouster and death.  Dr. Rothschild’s teaching career spans nearly a quarter of a century, beginning as a K-12 substitute in the hills of western Maine after he graduated from Harvard University in 1992 with a B.A. in East Asian Language and Civilizations and cleverly decided to write a novel on bronzecasting and kingship in Shang China in his parents’ basement. In the mid-90s, he taught History and Political Geography at Hebron Academy. Currently, he is a professor of Asian History here at the University of North Florida, where he has worked since receiving a Ph.D. in Chinese History from Brown University in 2003. His courses include, but are not limited to: Women and Gender in East Asia, Asian Art and Culture, Introduction to Asia, Traditional China, Modern China, Contemporary, China, Japanese Civilization, and a pair of seminars: “Tang China, The Empire is Open to All” and “Women and Gender in China, yesterday and Today.”   Nearly five years of living and working in the People’s Republic of China have enriched both Dr. Rothschild’s teaching and his research. From 1988 to 1990, he lived, studied Mandarin, and worked in Beijing. On a Fulbright grant in 2000–01, he researched at Peking University’s Institute for Research of Middle Antiquity, examining largely untapped epigraphic sources like the Qian-Tang Museum of Funerary Plaques outside Luoyang and combing archival sources at the National Library. In 2012-13, he spent a sabbatical year at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China.    The focus of Dr. Rothschild’s dissertation and ongoing research is Wu Zhao (624-705), better known as Wu Zetian or Empress Wu. His most recent book Emperor Wu Zhao and her Pantheon of Devis, Divinities, and Dynastic Mothers (Columbia University Press, 2015; see link) examines the female emperor’s sustained effort to deploy language, symbol, and ideology to harness the cultural resonance, maternal force, divine energy, and historical weight of a broad-base of female exemplars and divinities—Buddhist devis, Confucian exemplars, Daoist immortals, and mythic goddesses—to establish cultural, religious, and political legitimacy. Tapping into powerful subterranean reservoirs of female power, Wu Zhao built a pantheon of female divinities carefully calibrated to meet her needs at court. This pageant of goddesses and eminent women was promoted in scripted rhetoric, reinforced through poetry, celebrated in theatrical productions, and inscribed on steles. This work follows his first book, a biography of the female ruler titled Wu Zhao, China’s Only Female Emperor (Longman World Biography Series, 2008).  In addition, he has published an array of more than a dozen essays analyzing various facets of Wu Zhao’s sovereignty—her connection to apocalyptic Buddhism, her utilization of avian symbolism, her deft manipulation of language in choosing reign names, and the significance of her rapport with non-Chinese subjects—in Italian, Korean, Chinese and American journals. Recent essays have also examined other epiphenomena in early Tang history: one examines contested narratives of the environmental and political consequences of a locust infestation in 715-6 and another looks at escalating rhetoric opposing performances of a Sogdian dramas in the early eighth century after Wu Zhao’s ouster and death. 

Research Interest

Asian History - China, East Asia