Book Launch honouring Dr. Min-Sun Chen’s latest publication

 

Dr. Min-Sun Chen, Professor Emeritus of History, continues to contribute to teaching and research long after his retirement. Dr. Chen (PhD Chicago, 1971) was one of the earliest members of the History Department, coming to Lakehead in 1966, only one year after the University's formal foundation. He was Chair of the History Department from 1978 to 1984 and one of the founding members of the Thunder Bay Branch of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs.

 

For many years before his retirement in 1988, and in the fifteen years since then, Dr. Chen has been the Department's only specialist in Asian History, teaching courses in the history of both China and Japan, which he continues to do, in some cases through Distance Education. On Thursday, November 20, 2003, the History Department sponsored a formal launch of Dr. Chen's latest publication, entitled "Mythistory in Sino-Western Contacts: Jesuit Missionaries and the Pillars of Chinese Catholic Religion," which brings together the results of many years of his research, examining the various ways in which seventeenth-century Chinese scholars and European Jesuits interacted with and attempted to understand one another. "It is heartening to know that there is, indeed, intellectual life after retirement, and Dr. Chen is living proof of that fact," says Ron Harpelle, Chair of History.

 

Copies of Dr. Chen's book are available at the University Bookstore.