Lisa Pratt, professor of geological sciences, has been named Provost's Professor for 2009.

IU professor awarded prestigious prize for book from American Historical Association

The American Historical Association has awarded the 2010 John K. Fairbank Prize in East Asian History to Indiana University historian Klaus Mühlhahn for his book Criminal Justice in China: A History. The award will be presented in January during the association's Annual Meeting in San Diego. The prize is offered annually for an outstanding book in the history of China proper, Vietnam, Chinese Central Asia, Mongolia, Manchuria, Korea, or Japan, substantially after 1800.

Criminal Justice in China: A History, published in April by Harvard University Press, is the first comprehensive examination of the Chinese criminal justice system from late imperial times to the present. The book relies on unprecedented research in Chinese archives, including classified materials, and incorporates prisoner testimonies, witness reports and first-hand interviews.

Indiana University historian Klaus Mühlhahn estimates in his new book that 10 percent of China's people were imprisoned in the 1960s, perhaps half of them serving lengthy terms in labor camps devoted to the "re-education" of those accused of counter-revolutionary activities.

"I was totally unprepared for that," said Mühlhahn, a professor in the IU Bloomington Department of History, part of the College of Arts and Sciences. "Like most other China specialists, I didn't know how extensive this practice really was."

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