Breaking Gender Boundaries in the History Profession: Chen Hengzhe’s Transnational Education and Early Career, 1914–1926

Chen Hengzhe, a female intellectual of the May Fourth era, overcame gender barriers to formal education in early Republican China and leveraged her studies at Vassar College (1915–1919) and the University of Chicago (1919–1920) to become China’s first female history professor. Benefiting from the close-knit academic community at elite U.S. higher educational institutions, she built a transnational network of mentors and friends. Upon her return to China, under the influence of prominent historians James Breasted, James Robinson, and others, as well as H. G. Wells’s newly published Outline of History and Hendrik van Loon’s The Story of Mankind , she wrote her bestselling two-volume high school textbook titled Xiyang shi ( History of Western Countries ). Although this book blended the author’s personal narrative with translations of English texts, it received authoritative acclaim for its originality and up-to-date knowledge. Yet her experiences as a historian revealed the constraints on women’s academic advancement and the tension between domestic responsibilities and an academic career in the culture and society of Republican China.