Events

Modern China Lecture Series Featuring Jennifer Altehenger – When Folding Chairs Became Bestsellers: The Revolutionary Roots of China’s Furniture Exports

CGIS Knafel K262 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

Speaker: Jennifer Altehenger, Jessica Rawson Fellow in Modern Asian History, Associate Professor of Chinese History, Merton College, Oxford The People’s Republic of China is one of the world’s leading furniture producers, and international media frequently report on its furniture exports. Descriptions of how goods from China came to furnish homes and workplaces across the world […]

Modern China Lecture Series featuring Shellen Wu – Writing Global History from an Asian Perspective

CGIS South Room S354 1730 Cambridge St, Cambridge, MA, United States

Speaker: Shellen X. Wu, Associate Professor and L.H. Gipson Chair in Transnational History, Lehigh University Global history has drawn criticism for its lack of diversity among its practicing ranks and the flattening effect of its materialist focus. I would like to propose a middle way: a global history that encompasses individual agency; an intellectual history […]

Modern China Lecture featuring Uluğ Kuzuoğlu – Codes of Modernity: Chinese Scripts in the Global Information Age

CGIS South, Room S050 1730 Cambridge St, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

Speaker: Uluğ Kuzuoğlu, Assistant Professor of History, Washington University in St. Louis In the late nineteenth century, Chinese reformers and revolutionaries believed that there was something fundamentally wrong with the Chinese writing system. The Chinese characters, they argued, were too cumbersome to learn, blocking the channels of communication, obstructing mass literacy, and impeding scientific progress. […]