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Further Reading

Jeffery Wasserstrom: American Study of China - Changes and Continuities since the Late 1970s


  • Jeffery Wasserstrom

    Jeffrey Wasserstrom (华志坚) is Chancellor’s Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine.

Speaker: Jeffery Wasserstrom (University of California, Irvine)

Date: November 4, 2015 – Wednesday

Time: 15:30

Venue: R604, Run Run Shaw Library, Hongkou Campus

Language: English

Speaker Biography: Jeffrey Wasserstrom (华志坚) is Chancellor’s Professor of History at the University of California Irvine, the author of books such as China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know (2010/2013). He holds a master’s degree from Harvard, a doctorate from Berkeley, and studied for one year as a graduate student at Fudan University.

He teaches courses on modern Chinese history and also on world history, and he has published on subjects ranging from the May 4th Movement to the role of women in revolutionary movements to the ways that Shanghai has changed between the 1840s and the present.

Summary: This presentation will explore trends in American scholarship on China since the late 1970s, focusing in particular on the work done by historians interested in the last two hundred years. Some issues the speaker will address will include how American specialists in Chinese studies in different disciplines interact and collaborate, and how focus has shifted over time among historians as they bring in novel methods, theories, and time periods. Since the speaker has worked extensively on Shanghai (one of his last book was Global Shanghai, 1850-2010), the scholarship on that city will be used as a case study, and the speaker will compare and contrast the work on it done in Chinese and in Western languages. Topics addressed will include the way that trends associated with first the "New Social History" and later the "New Cultural History" have influenced American study of China; the way that access to and interest in novel sources has changed the questions historians ask about the past; and the relationship within the United States between specialist work on China and books written for general audiences.

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Further Reading