薇拉-施娃茨的中文名为舒衡哲, 生于罗马尼亚, 犹太人, 现任教于美国康州威斯理安大学, 并从事中国现代史研究。1980 年曾作为首批美国留学生在北京大学中文系学习。她曾出版过七本书。

Born in Romania, Vera Schwarcz is a China historian and poet. She earned her BA from Vassar, MA from Yale and PH.D from Stanford. The author of eight books on Chinese and Jewish history including the prize-winning Bridge Across Broken Time: Chinese and Jewish Cultural Memory; The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919; Time for Telling Truth is Running Out: Conversations with Zhang Shenfu; Place and Memory in Singing Crane Garden and most recently: Colors of Veracity: A quest for truth in China, and beyond (Hawaii University Press, 2014). She has also written five books of poetry, among them: In the Garden of Memory (with paper art by Holocaust survivor Chava Pressburger), Brief Rest in the Garden of Flourishing Grace; Chisel of Remembrance. Her most recent collection of poems is entitled Ancestral Intelligence: Renditions and Poems (Antrim Press, 2013). Schwarcz holds the Freeman Chair in East Asian Studies at Wesleyan University in CT. Her work won a Guggenheim Fellowship and is featured on the web @: between2walls.com.