Joseph Fletcher (historian)

{{Short description|American historian of China and Central Asia}}

Joseph Francis Fletcher, Jr. (1934–1984) was an American historian of China and Central Asia and a professor in the East Asian Languages and Civilizations Department of Harvard University. His main areas of research included interaction between the Islamic and Chinese worlds, Manchu and Mongol studies.

Biography

Fletcher graduated from Harvard University in 1957.{{Cite web |title=Joseph Fletcher |url=https://ealc.fas.harvard.edu/joseph-fletcher |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211104195345/https://ealc.fas.harvard.edu/joseph-fletcher |archive-date=4 November 2021 |website=Harvard University Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations}} He received his PhD from Harvard's Department of Far Eastern Languages in 1965 and became an assistant professor within the department a year later. In 1972, he was appointed professor of Chinese and Central Asian History.

Fletcher died from complications related to cancer on 14 June 1984, at the age of 49.{{Cite news |date=1984-06-16 |title=Joseph F. Fletcher Jr. Dies; Historian of Asia at Harvard |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1984/06/16/obituaries/joseph-f-fletcher-jr-dies-historian-of-asia-at-harvard.html |access-date=2022-05-15 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220515211110/https://www.nytimes.com/1984/06/16/obituaries/joseph-f-fletcher-jr-dies-historian-of-asia-at-harvard.html |archive-date=15 May 2022 |issn=0362-4331}}

Personal life

Fletcher was the son of Joseph Fletcher, an ethicist. Fletcher had two children.

Notable works

Joseph Fletcher contributed several chapters ("Ch'ing Inner Asia, c. 1800" and others) to volume 10 of The Cambridge History of China.

Joseph Fletcher's posthumously published work, The Naqshbandiyya in Northwest China (Variorum, 1995), remains one of the main English-languages sources on the introduction of Sufism into China, and is extensively cited by practically all books in English on Islam in China published since then.

Another posthumously published work by Fletcher, the unfinished essay "Integrative History: Parallels and Interconnections in the Early Modern Period, 1500–1800",{{Cite journal |last=Fletcher |first=Joseph F. |date=1985 |title=Integrative History: Parallels and Interconnections in the Early Modern Period, 1500–1800 |journal=Journal of Turkish Studies |volume=9 |pages=37–57}} is an early argument in favor of applying the early modern periodization to all of Eurasia and a preliminary exploration of its global applicability.{{Cite book |last=Bentley |first=Jerry H. |author-link=Jerry H. Bentley |title=Between the Middle Ages and Modernity: Individual and Community in the Early Modern World |date=2007 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |isbn=978-0-7425-7147-1 |editor-last=Parker |editor-first=Charles H. |location=Lanham |page=19 |chapter=Early Modern Europe and the Early Modern World |editor-last2=Bentley |editor-first2=Jerry H.}}

References

External links

[http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~iaas/Fletcher%20Memorial%20Lecture-1.htm The Joseph Fletcher Memorial Lecture]{{Dead link|date=April 2025}}: biography and bibliography.
[http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~iaas/IAAS%20Website-Fletcher%20Memorial%20Lecture-1%20Fletcher.htm Joseph Fletcher Bibliography]{{Dead link|date=April 2025}}

Category:American sinologists

Category:American historians of Islam

Category:Harvard University faculty

Category:1934 births

Category:1984 deaths

Category:20th-century American historians

Category:American male non-fiction writers

Category:Mongolists

Category:Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni

Category:Historians of Central Asia

Category:20th-century American male writers