Vera Schwarcz is Freeman Professor of East Asian Studies at Wesleyan University. Her BA was from Vassar College with a MA from Yale, a MAA from Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. from Standford Univerisity.
Born in Romania, Schwarcz has taught Chinese history at Stanford University, Wesleyan University, as well as at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Beijing University and Centre Chine in Paris. She is serving currently as Director of the Freeman Center for East Asian Studies and Chair of the East Asian Studies Program at Wesleyan. She is the author of eight books, including the prize-winning Bridge Across Broken Time: Chinese and Jewish Cultural Memory (Yale University Press, 1999) as well as Time for Telling Truth Is Running Out: Conversations with Zhang Shenfu (Yale, 1986); The Chinese Enlightenment (Berkeley, 1984) and most recently –Place and Memory in Singing Crane Garden (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). She is also the author of three books of poetry including A Scoop of Light and In The Garden of Memory– a collaboration with the Prague-born Israeli artist Chava Pressburger