Charlotte Furth

Charlotte Davis Furth (January 22, 1934 – June 19, 2022) was an American scholar of Chinese history.

She was a professor at California State University, Long Beach, and at the University of Southern California.

She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Fulbright fellowship for her research, and published several books.

Charlotte Davis was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, and raised in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the daughter of Lambert Davis and Isabella Davis.

She earned a bachelor's degree in French literature from the University of North Carolina in 1954.

In 1956, Charlotte Davis married her childhood friend Montgomery Furth, a philosophy professor.

They had two children, David and Isabella.

She completed doctoral studies in Chinese history at Stanford University in 1965, the same year her younger child was born.

In 1972 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

She taught at Beijing University in 1981 and 1982, one of the first American Fulbright fellows admitted to teach in China after the Cultural Revolution.

Furth taught history for 23 years at the California State University, Long Beach (CSULB), until 1989, and then for 18 more years at the University of Southern California (USC).

Her husband died in 1991, and she died in 2022, at the age of 88.

She retired with emeritus status from USC in 2008.

In 2012 she was honored by the Association for Asian Studies with an award for her "distinguished contributions to Asian Studies."

Furth was co-editor of Late Imperial China, and served on the editorial board of The Journal of Asian Studies. She was a contributor to The Cambridge History of China.