Anthropology Professor and Former WEAI Director Myron Cohen Retires After Nearly 60 Years
Scholar of Chinese society made groundbreaking contributions through focus on family and kinship, popular religion, and social change
After nearly 60 years at Columbia University, Professor Myron L. Cohen, a former Director of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and a Professor of Anthropology specializing in Chinese society, celebrated his retirement earlier this month, surrounded by colleagues, students, friends, and family.
Professor Cohen’s research centered on the changes Chinese society has undergone from the seventeenth century to the present, with a focus on family and kinship, popular religion, and economic culture. He conducted extensive fieldwork in Taiwan and in villages in northern, eastern, and western mainland China.
Reviewing Cohen’s 2005 book Kinship, Contract, Community, and State: Anthropological Perspectives on China for the China Journal in 2007, Graham E. Johnson lauded Professor Cohen as “one of the most distinguished practitioners of Chinese anthropology.” Johnson further described the book as “essential reading for all who are engaged in the process of attempting to understand the complexities of Chinese culture and society.”
Professor Cohen is also the author of House United, House Divided: The Chinese Family in Taiwan (1976). He edited Asia Case Studies in the Social Sciences: A Guide for Teaching (1992) and contributed numerous chapters to edited volumes and journals, including more recent publications like “Ethnicity and the Degree-Holding Elite in Qing-Era Taiwan: The 1803 Restoration of the Prefectural Confucian Temple” in Family, Ethnicity, and State in Chinese Culture Under the Impact of Globalization (2017), edited by Han Min, Kawai Hironao, and Wong Heung Wah; and “High Ancestors among the Hakka Chinese: Past and Present, Rural, Urban, and Global,” for Global Hakka Studies (2017).
For his groundbreaking contributions to the study of China, Professor Cohen was awarded the 2016 Chinese Anthropology Lifetime Achievement Award from the Shanghai Society of Anthropology. That same year, he was recognized for his contributions to Hakka academic research with the First Class Professional Medal in Hakka Affairs at the opening ceremony of the Fourth Taiwan International Conference on Hakka Studies.
Professor Cohen was the seventh director of the East Asian Institute (renamed the Weatherhead East Asian Institute in 2003) and served for two terms, from 1975 to 1976 and from 2006 to 2014. As Director, he led the Institute through several major milestones, including events commemorating its sixtieth anniversary in Beijing, Tokyo, and Seoul.
Professor Cohen enriched the academic landscape of Asian studies at Columbia by helping to develop courses on the Asian experience in the United States. Shortly after joining the university, Professor Cohen worked with Columbia students of Asian descent to formulate a new anthropology course on “The Asian Experience in America.” Following approval from a 13-member instructional panel, Professor Cohen taught the new anthropology course for the first time in the spring semester of 1971.
Almost 60 years after joining the University faculty, and as an active member of WEAI, Professor Cohen retired with emeritus status as of July 2024.
An array of distinguished scholars paid tribute to Professor Cohen at his retirement party, held at Columbia University on October 18, 2024.
Speakers included Nicholas Bartlett, Assistant Professor, Asian & Middle Eastern Cultures, Barnard College; Susan Greennhalgh, John King & Wilma Cannon Fairbank Professor Emerita of Chinese Society, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University; David Johnson, Professor Emeritus, Department of History, UC Berkeley; Laurel Kendall, Adjunct Senior Research Scholar at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and Curator, Asian Ethnology/Curator-in-Charge of African and Pacific Ethnology, Museum of Natural History; Gregory A. Ruf, Associate Professor, Department of Asian & Asian American Studies, Stony Brook University; John Shepherd, Professor Emeritus, Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia; and Madeline H. Zelin, Dean Lung Professor of Chinese Studies and Professor of History, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and Department of History, Columbia University.
From all of us here at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and Columbia University: Thank you, Professor Cohen, for your decades of dedication!