Born in Romania, Vera Schwarcz holds the Freeman Chair in East Asian Studies at Wesleyan University in CT., USA.  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 Place and Memory in Singing Crane Garden (forthcoming from the University of Pennsylvania Press). 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.  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. Her new book manuscript centers on the problem of truth in comparative history.