Emily Honig

1953 - 2023

Emily Honig
February 11, 1953 - October 14, 2023
Emily Honig, Professor Emerita of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz, died at home on October 14 after living a full and vibrant (and oftentimes defiant) life with incurable cancer for the past several years. Her zest for life will remain with us all.
Emily was born in San Francisco on February 11, 1953, to Lorraine and Victor Honig. She was a proud product of the San Francisco public school system. Growing up in the 1960's, she inherited a deep commitment to progressive politics from her parents, joining her family on countless demonstrations against the Vietnam War. Her great concern for social justice was a constant throughout her life. She began her college years at UCLA and then transferred to Brown University, where she studied American history. Recruited as an undergraduate to join one of the first delegations of student leaders invited to visit China during the Cultural Revolution, she went on to complete an MA in East Asian Studies and a PhD in Chinese history at Stanford.
Emily was a pioneering scholar whose research and teaching focused on modern China with particular attention to labor and gender. A member of the first cohort of graduate students to have the opportunity to conduct dissertation research in the People's Republic, she lived in Shanghai for two years, studying at Fudan University. There she investigated the history of women cotton mill workers in prerevolutionary China, about which she published her first book. Her subsequent books explored changing gender configurations in late twentieth-century China, the shaping and reshaping of ethnic tensions in Shanghai's working class, and the experiences of youth during the latter part of the Cultural Revolution. She was an early founder of the field of Chinese women's history in North America and an active participant in exchanges with women's studies scholars based in China.
After teaching at Lafayette College and Yale University, Emily joined the Department of Women's Studies at UC Santa Cruz in 1992. In 2008, she joined the Department of History and taught there until her retirement in 2020. At UC Santa Cruz, Emily was a key participant in the PhD program in East Asian History. She was known for intense individual attention to the work of her students, in whom she took enormous pride. She was a formidable reader of student work, and her meticulous work and care for students was a crucial contributing factor to the success of the program.
Emily's interests ranged far beyond Chinese history. She was a student of multiple languages, including Japanese, Dutch, Russian, and Spanish, and various dialects of Chinese. She was passionate about music, playing piano, bassoon, and recorder, and most recently, cello. She was a constant presence at folk festivals and jazz concerts throughout the Bay Area. She cultivated a vast array of close friends from all walks of life. She was active in a number of philanthropic organizations, most recently as a member of the Race, Gender, and Human Rights Fund and founder of the Victor & Lorraine Honig Initiative for Bay Area Social & Economic Justice. Emily was a fourth-degree black belt in Aikido, an enthusiastic and creative cook, an inveterate whale watcher who could easily have flourished as a marine scientist, a traveler, a hiker who particularly loved Pt. Reyes and the high Sierras, an indulgent human companion to her rambunctious dog Yuki, and a proud and adoring mother of her son Jesse. She remained intensively engaged with people, nonhuman creatures, and the wider world until the very end of her life.
Emily was predeceased by her parents Lorraine and Victor. She is survived by her son Jesse, her sister Lisa, her dog Yuki, and countless friends and relatives who mourn her departure. A celebration of her life is being planned for January. In lieu of flowers, please contribute to the Center for Constitutional Rights or Jewish Voice for Peace.