Harriet Cornelia Mills

Harriet Cornelia Mills (2 April 1920 in Tokyo – 5 March 2016 in Mitchellville) was a professor of Chinese language and literature.

Biography

Harriet C. Mills was born in Tokyo as the daughter of Presbyterian missionaries from the USA, Wilson Mills and Cornelia Mills (née Seyle). She came to Hankou as an infant and attended American primary and secondary schools in Nanjing and Shanghai.[1] Mills completed undergraduate Studies at Wellesley College and graduate studies at Columbia University, where she got a PhD degree in Chinese in 1963,[2] with a thesis titled Lu Hsün: 1927–1936, the years on the left.

In 1947, Mills went to China on a Fulbright Scholarship studying and doing research on Lu Xun. She also assisted Dorothy Borg who taught European history at Peking University and taught classes herself.[3] After the beginning of the Korean War, Mills and other US Americans tried to leave China but were denied exit visas.[1]

Mills was arrested in July 1951 at the same time as several other foreigners living in China at the time, including Antonio Riva, Ruichi Yamaguchi, W. Allyn and Adele Rickett.[4] Her Chinese friends such as Wang Tieya later also faced repression because of associating with her.[3] She was accused to possess an illegal radio and to be a spy. In October 1955, Mills was released via Hong Kong. After her release, she said in front of the press in Hong Kong that she had “engaged in activities against the Chinese people.”[5] She told reporters: “The communists have a perfect right to arrest me. … I confessed from the very day I was arrested.” She said she had confessed passing on information to British and US diplomats, stressing repeatedly she had been “treated with the utmost consideration and courtesy” by her captors and that she had not been tortured. US officials said they could not say whether she had undergone “brainwashing treatment”.[6] The CIA indirectly assigned Bill Thetford to escort her back to the US and to debrief her.[7]

In 1959, Mills started teaching Chinese at Columbia University, and in 1960 she became an associated professor of Chinese.[2]

Later in her career, she completed a second MA degree in linguistics at the University of Michigan.

In 1966, Mills became an associated professor of Chinese at the University of Michigan. In 1974, she became professor of Chinese language and Literature at the Department of Far Eastern Languages and Literatures (today the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures). She retired in 1990.[2]

Mills specialized in modern Chinese literature and published one of the most important Chinese language textbooks in the US.[2][8]

Mills passed away at the age of 95. She is survived by her sister Angie.[1]

Works (selection)

Books

Articles

External links

References

  1. 1 2 3 Roberts 2016.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Memoir: Harriet C. Mills Regent’s Proceedings 269, University of Michigan.
  3. 1 2 Ronald St. John MacDonald (ed.): Essays in Honour of Wang Tieya. p. 9–10.
  4. ↑ Frank Dikötter: The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution, 1945–57. p. 114; cf. Allyn Rickett, Adele Rickett: Prisoners of Liberation: Four Years in a Chinese Communist Prison. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1973.
  5. ↑ Hsinhua, Canton, 4 November 1955.
  6. ↑ Four Americans are Released by Red China. In: Gettysburg Times, 31 October 1955.
  7. ↑ Carol Howe: Never Forget to Laugh: Personal Recollections of Bill Thetford. 2010, pp. 58–59.
  8. ↑ Madeline Men-li Chu: Mapping the course of the Chinese language field. Chinese Language Teachers Association, 1999, p. 231; Peter A. Eddy: Chinese Language Study in American Higher Education: State of the Art. Center for Applied Linguistics, 1980, p. 4.
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