David Noel Keightley, 1932-2017

H-Asia David Noel Keightley, 1932-2017

Discussion published by Ryan Dunch on Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Ed. note: Our colleague Frank Shulman has shared the sad news of the death of the great Shang China scholar David Keightley, who passed away in California on February 23. Frank has kindly compiled the messages below, which are reproduced with the permission of their authors. Text from the Wikipedia article on Prof. Keightley is reproduced with attribution under the terms of the relevant Creative Commons license. I encourage others who knew David Keightley to share their memories and tributes to him on H-Asia in the days to come. Ryan Dunch

On February 26th, Keith Knapp, Professor of History at the Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, informed the members of three listserves for Chinese Studies -- ["[email protected]", "[email protected]", and "[email protected]" – of the passing of Professor David Noel Keightley. He wrote as follows:

Dear Colleagues, It is with deep sadness that I inform you of the death of David Noel Keightley who passed away at 3:00 am on Thursday, February 23. David was a world renowned expert on the Shang Dynasty and Oracle Bones. He was also a much beloved instructor and towering intellect. He was certainly one of the best teachers that I have ever had.

The memorial service will be held onMarch 25 at 11:00 am at the Sunset View Mortuary and Cemetery, 101 Colusa Ave, El Cerrito, California 94530.

With much sorrow, Keith

===== According to Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Keightley]:

David N. Keightley was born on October 25, 1932, in London, England, and lived there until his family moved to the United States in 1947. He attended Amherst College as an undergraduate student, graduating in 1953 with a B.A. in English with a minor in biochemistry. He then received a Fulbright Scholarship, which he used to study Medieval French at the University of Lille. He received an M.A. in modern European history from New York University in 1956. He then worked for several years at publishing companies in New York City and as a freelance writer before beginning his study of Chinese and Sinology.

Keightley began his graduate study in East Asian history at Columbia University in 1962. In 1965, Keightley moved to Taipei, Taiwan where he studied Chinese for two years at the Stanford Center (modern Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Study). He then returned to the United

Citation: Ryan Dunch. David Noel Keightley, 1932-2017. H-Asia. 03-07-2017. https://networks.h-net.org/node/22055/discussions/170323/david-noel-keightley-1932-2017 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-Asia

States to complete his doctoral studies at Columbia under the Swedish Sinologist Hans Bielenstein, and received a Ph.D. in 1969 with a dissertation entitled "Public Work in Ancient China: A Study of Forced Labor in the Shang and Early Chou".

After receiving his Ph.D. in 1969, Keightley was selected to replace Woodbridge Bingham (1901–1986) as professor of East Asian history at the University of California, Berkeley. Keightley became one of the leading Western scholars of Chinese oracle bones, which contain the earliest known examples of Chinese writing. In 1995, the American Sinologist Edward Shaughnessy stated that Keightley "has done more to introduce the depth and breadth of early China's oracle-bone divination to Western readers than any [other] scholar." He taught and worked at Berkeley until his retirement in 1998. Keightley died peacefully in his sleep at his home on February 23, 2017, aged 84.

To this should be added the fact that David Keightley received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1978 and an award from the MacArthur Fellows Program in 1986. His many publications included

Sources of Shang History: The Oracle-Bone Inscriptions of Bronze Age China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978; "The Shang: China's First Historical Dynasty." In Michael Loewe and Edward Shaughnessy. The Cambridge History of Ancient China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. pp. 232–291; The Ancestral Landscape: Time, Space, and Community in Late Shang China (ca. 1200-1045 B.C.). Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 2000; Working for His Majesty: Research Notes on Labor Mobilization in Late Shang China (ca. 1200-1045 B.C.), as Seen in the Oracle-Bone Inscriptions, with Particular Attention to Handicraft Industries, Agriculture, Warfare, Hunting, Construction, and the Shang’s Legacies. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 2012; and These Bones Shall Rise Again: Selected Writings on Early China. Albany: State University of New York Press. 2013.

He was co-founder of the journal Early China and the author of over sixty articles dealing with the history of early China.

===== The tributes that have since come to my attention are as follows:

We have lost a giant in Chinese studies. David Keightley was a wonderful person and scholar whose work on ancient China and its antecedents inspired me a lot, and is highly relevant to modern China studies, too, especially because of the intense struggles today, over how to understand China's past. I was lucky to meet him one last time, when he graced my presentation on just that topic, at Berkeley two years ago. In sadness,

Magnus Fiskesjö Associate Professor of Anthropology, Cornell University [email protected]

=====

Among the Soviet Jews who applied for exit visas to emigrate to Israel during the early 1970s was Vitaly A. Rubin, a specialist in early Chinese history and philosophy, a senior research fellow in Chinese Studies at Moscow's Institute of Oriental Studies, and a leader in the Soviet Jewish emigration movement. He and his wife Inessa became "refusedniks" when their applications were officially rejected. A nearly five-year long international campaign to persuade the government to reverse its decision ensued. David Keightley played an active role early on in that campaign -- and at an early point in his own professional career. He joined with me, Harold Z. Schiffrin, Steven I. Levine, Wm. Theodore deBary, Lucien Bianco, Rhoads Murphey, and many other American, European and Israeli scholars engaged in China studies in undertaking a concerted effort that finally culminated in success in 1976.

For some further information in this regard, please see:

Schiffrin, Harold Z. "Obituary: VITALY ARONOVICH RUBIN (1923-1981)". Journal of Asian Studies (Ann Arbor, Michigan) 41, no.3 (May 1, 1982): 645. search.proquest.com/openview/.../1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=1817327 Vitaly A. Rubin. Individual and State in Ancient China: Essays on Four Chinese Philosophers. Translated by Steven I. Levine. New York: Columbia University Press, 1976. xxix, 149p. "The Fate of Rubin", by L. Carrington Goodrich. New York Review of Books, October 3, 1974. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1974/10/03/the-fate-of-rubin/

Additional information about David Keightley and his connection with Vitaly Rubin may be found through a search of the Internet. In addition, I have a number of files and copies of personal correspondence with David Keightley that document his efforts on behalf of Vitaly Rubin, all of which I eventually intend to deposit in an appropriate institutional archive.

May David Keightley's wonderful assistance to other scholars be remembered for many years to come!

Frank Joseph Shulman Bibliographer, Editor and Consultant for Reference Publications in Asian Studies [email protected]

===== I am saddened by the news of David Keightley's passing. Although I never had the pleasure of meeting him in person and my own work in the contemporary China field was at the other end of his outstanding work on ancient China, I viewed him with great respect both as a scholar and a humanist involved in a common struggle.

Allow me to indulge some old memories. As an untenured assistant professor at Columbia University (1973-76), with the support of intellectual giants like Wm. Theodore deBary, then the provost, John Fairbank, Zvi Schiffrin, and many others, including you, of course, I initiated the International Committee for Vitaly A. Rubin that I ran out of my upper right-hand desk drawer in my office at the East Asian Institute. It was Anne Birrell, then a graduate student in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Columbia, who suggested that as part of the campaign to free Vitaly Rubin, I translate his book on ancient Chinese thinkers, the Russian original of which my own mentor Benjamin I.

Schwartz had reviewed in a scholarly journal, I think the Journal of Asian Studies.

David Keightley's intellectual and moral support during the campaign to persuade the Soviets to allow Rubin to emigrate to Israel was indispensable. I echo your hope that his friends, colleagues, former students, and others keep alive their memories of Professor Keightley for many years to come.

Steven I. Levine Research Faculty Associate at the University of Montana [email protected]

===== I am very saddened by this news. David was a true giant in the field. He and I were fellow graduate students at Columbia , and I will never forget the moment when he emerged from the Tombs (the four underground floors of Kent Hall's East Asian library) to inform me excitedly, "Jonathan! I have just had in my hands a Han Dynasty crossbow trigger!" David knew that I was working on Sung- Dynasty poet Mei Yao-ch'en for my dissertation, and that Mei had a remarkable poem on a Han Dynasty crossbow trigger. He had, incredibly, actually found one among the objects housed at Columbia by the Sackler estate. And he was that collegial and supportive that, in the middle of his own enormously important work, he would recall that a fellow student, myself, had an interest in this arcane subject! May God bless his memory,

Jonathan Chaves Professor of Chinese Language and Literature, The George Washington University [email protected]