Norman Harry Rothschild

PHILLIPS – Norman Harry Rothschild, 52, eminent scholar of Tang Dynasty China, died at his family hill-farm in western Maine on Dec. 10, 2021.

He grew up on this remote farm and attended elementary school in Phillips and Strong. Early on, he demonstrated a precocious love of wordplay and a facility with numbers. At 12, having skipped several years of school, he entered Mt. Abram Regional High School. In particular, he loved throwing things–baseballs, hay bales on the farm, the shotput and discus on the athletic field. He competed in the Junior Olympics, and graduated high school at 15, already well over 6 feet and 200 pounds. After a post graduate year at Phillips Academy Andover (where he took a formative first course in Chinese language and won awards in Track and Field), he entered Harvard College at 17.

There, he began his concentration in East Asian Studies and earned the first of a half-dozen varsity letters in Track and Field. While traveling and studying in China during his sophomore year, he met his future wife, Liu Chengmei. Their deepening relationship and involvement with the student community in Beijing led to their participation in the unrest that culminated in pro-democracy demonstrations across the country. He was forced to leave China days before tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square.

After several years of intense personal and diplomatic efforts, Chengmei joined him in the United States, where they were married at the family farm in 1991. He graduated Harvard the following year, hoisting his four month old daughter, Viola Luolan, on to the stage to receive his diploma and the Imre Memorial Award, given to one whose interests are “not bounded by academic or institutional structures–a joyous, deeply-rooted affirmation of life, disdain for the purely conventional, a love of adventure, and desire to learn by experiencing; the ability to respond creatively to difficult situations.” For the rest of his life, in an uncanny fashion, he not only fulfilled, but embodied, these words.

For several years, he taught history and coached at Hebron Academy before entering a doctoral program at Brown University. Already, issues of rhetoric, ritual, religion, gender, and in particular, the political authority of Wu Zhao, China’s only female emperor, began to focus his interest. In the years to come, he would research and formulate these issues into the major academic and professional focus of his career. He was a Fulbright scholar at Peking University in 2000-2001. The following year, his son, Liu, was born.

While a history professor at the University of North Florida, he authored two books, a biography of Wu Zetian entitled “Wu Zhao, China’s Only Female Emperor” (Pearson-Longman, 2008) and “Emperor Wu Zhao and Her Pantheon of Devis, Divinities, and Dynastic Mothers” (Columbia University Press, 2015). In addition to these books, he wrote, translated, and edited dozens of scholarly articles that appeared in Italian, Korean, Chinese, and English journals, and lectured across the U.S., England, and China. He is the sole American to serve as president of the Wu Zetian Research Society in China.

For the last six years, after he was diagnosed with Stage IV gastroesophageal cancer, he was powerfully productive. Shortly before his death, he finished a third book, “The World of Wu Zhao” (Anthem Press, forthcoming). He also completed a collection of short stories.

He is buried in the apple orchard he helped plant, prune, and harvest throughout his life.

He is survived by his wife Chengmei Rothschild; daughter Viola, and son Liu; by his mother and father Catharine and Michael Rothschild and Wendy Slaughter Fleming; by his sister, Ana and brother-in-law James, his sister, Ida; his brother Amos and sister-in-law Sara, and their children Eva and Marlowe; his brother, Walker and sister-in-law Julia; his sister, Rita and brother-in-law Girish, and their children Aadi, Aara, and Ayan.