12 Facts About Arif Dirlik

Arif Dirlik was a Turkish-American historian who published on historiography and political ideology in modern China, as well as issues in modernity, globalization, and postcolonial criticism.

Arif Dirlik received his undergraduate degree in engineering and came to the United States to study science at the University of Rochester, but developed an interest in Chinese history instead.

Arif Dirlik held a brief appointment as Green Professor at the University of British Columbia in February 2016.

Arif Dirlik taught at Duke University for thirty years as Professor of History and Anthropology before moving in 2001 to the University of Oregon where he served as Knight Professor of Social Science, Professor of History and Anthropology, and Director of the Center for Critical Theory and Transnational Studies until his retirement in 2006.

Arif Dirlik has served as visiting professor at the University of British Columbia, University of Victoria, University of California, Los Angeles, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Soka University of America.

Arif Dirlik has been honored with distinguished adjunct professorships at the Center for Marxist Social Theory of Nanjing University, Beijing University of Language and Culture, and the Northwest University for Nationalities in Lanzhou.

Arif Dirlik was the editor of two-book series, "Studies in Global Modernity" as well as co-editor of a series of translations from prominent Chinese official intellectuals, published by Brill Publishers in the Netherlands.

Arif Dirlik's works have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, Bulgarian, French, German and Portuguese.

Arif Dirlik took an engaged and critical approach to scholarship, oriented by "political relations and their social consequences" and "history as the search for universals".

Arif Dirlik spoke on his approach to history and the theoretical issues of historiography in a 2002 interview.

Arif Dirlik sees Dirlik's focus shifting around the time of his 1991 book Anarchism in Chinese Revolution from "historicizing earlier-generation Chinese Marxists and their revolutionary practices and theoretical reflections" towards a critique of "newly emergent postcolonial studies in North American academe as complicit with globalization and neoliberalism".

Arif Dirlik married fellow historian Roxann Prazniak at the Duke Chapel in 1984.