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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240403T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240403T173000
DTSTAMP:20260608T185355
CREATED:20240221T181510Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250130T155052Z
UID:35570-1712160000-1712165400@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Modern China Lecture featuring Uluğ Kuzuoğlu - Codes of Modernity: Chinese Scripts in the Global Information Age
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Uluğ Kuzuoğlu\, Assistant Professor of History\, Washington University in St. Louis \n\n\n\nIn 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. What had sustained a civilization for more than three millennia was suddenly recast as the root cause of an ongoing cultural suicide. In this talk\, Uluğ Kuzuoğlu draws on his book to rethink the historical origins of Chinese script reforms––efforts to alphabetize or simplify the writing system—from the 1890s to the 1980s. Examining the material conditions and political economy underlying attempts to modernize scripts\, Kuzuoğlu demonstrates that these reforms were at the forefront of an emergent information age\, precipitated by new communications technologies and infrastructures as well as industrial\, educational\, and bureaucratic pressures for information management. Situating China within a global context\, this talk describes how scripts became instruments to increase labor efficiency and create alternate political futures in China and the world.”  \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/modern-china-lecture-featuring-ulug-kuzuoglu-codes-of-modernity-chinese-scripts-in-the-global-information-age/
LOCATION:CGIS South\, Room S050\, 1730 Cambridge St\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Modern China Lecture
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/ulug.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240917T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240917T173000
DTSTAMP:20260608T185355
CREATED:20240812T154251Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250130T155052Z
UID:37135-1726588800-1726594200@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Modern China Lecture Series featuring Rebecca Nedostup - "War Being" in Mid Twentieth Century China and Taiwan
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Rebecca Nedostup\, Associate Professor of History\, Associate Professor of East Asian Studies\, Brown UniversityTwo decades of intense hot and cold war in China and Taiwan between the 1930s and 1950s produced not only significant economic\, political\, and environmental changes\, but notable consequences for the epistemological structuring of everyday experience. Using examples of shifting conceptions of physical and cosmological refuge found in Jiangsu\, Sichuan\, and Taiwan\, I suggest some ways in which the scale and conduct of warfare during this period challenged but did not entirely erase extant conceptions of space and time. Although national and geopolitical frameworks threatened to eclipse alternate ways in which people made community among the living and the dead\, knowledge and projections of spatial and chronological arrangements were still intimately tied to the social networks that activated them – even as such networks were themselves in flux. The tension between state utilizations of population displacement and the self-conception and self-organization of the displaced themselves would set the stage for the large-scale social experiments and new migration patterns of the late twentieth century. \n\n\n\nRebecca Nedostup is a historian of twentieth-century China and Taiwan at Brown University. She works on displacement and emplacement; the social and political roles of the living and the dead in times of disruption; and the relationship of transitional justice and historical consciousness. Her book Superstitious Regimes: Religion and the Politics of Chinese Modernity looked at the modern categorization of religious practice and its social and political ramifications. Her next book. War Being\, is on the making and unmaking of community among people displaced by conflict across China and Taiwan from the 1930s through the 1950s. More broadly\, she is interested in ritual studies\, critical archive studies\, digital ontologies\, and historic preservation. She is faculty director of the Choices program\, and was previously Visiting Chair of Taiwan Studies at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) and Leiden University Institute for Area Studies (LIAS). \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/modern-china-lecture-series-featuring-rebecca-nedostup/
LOCATION:CGIS Knafel K262\, 1737 Cambridge Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Modern China Lecture
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Rebecca-Nedostup.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241021T161500
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241021T174500
DTSTAMP:20260608T185355
CREATED:20240812T142027Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250130T155052Z
UID:37119-1729527300-1729532700@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Modern China Lecture Series featuring Janet Chen - Medium or Message? The Politics of Language in Broadcasting in Taiwan\, 1945-1975
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Janet Y. Chen\, Professor of Chinese History; Director\, East Asian Studies Program\, Princeton University \n\n\n\nAt the end of 1975\, the KMT government in Taiwan passed the Radio and Television Law\, designating Mandarin as the “primary language of broadcasting” and mandating the reduction of dialect. This legislation\, which took effect in January 1976\, was the culmination of more than twenty years of debates over the politics of language in mass media. Radio and television broadcasting were crucial components of the state apparatus for fighting the “psychological war” (心戰) of “opposing the Communists and resisting the Soviets” (反共抗俄). Yet using the national language as the medium of broadcasting made it difficult to effectively disseminate the messages crucial to sustaining the cause of anti-Communism. Programming in Minnanhua and Hakka could reach wider audiences\, but at the cost of diluting the national language project. Which was more important—the medium or the message? This talk will examine changes in the mass media environment\, the effects on people’s interactions with the KMT’s ideological goals\, and the history of Radio and Television Law. \n\n\n\nJanet Chen is Professor of History and East Asian Studies\, specializing in twentieth-century China.  Her first book\, Guilty of Indigence: The Urban Poor in China\, 1900-1953(Link is external)(Princeton University Press\, 2012)\, is a study of the destitute homeless during a time of war and revolution.  A new book project underway\, titled “The Sounds of Mandarin: The Making of a National Language in China and Taiwan\,” will be a study of how ordinary people learned to speak “Mandarin” at its various stages of historical formation. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/modern-china-lecture-series-featuring-janet-chen/
LOCATION:CGIS Knafel K262\, 1737 Cambridge Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Modern China Lecture
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/janet-chen-talk.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241105T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241105T173000
DTSTAMP:20260608T185355
CREATED:20240812T161133Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250130T155052Z
UID:37138-1730822400-1730827800@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Modern China Lecture Series featuring Selda Altan — Chinese Workers of the World: Colonialism\, Chinese Labor\, and the Yunnan–Indochina Railway
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Selda Altan\, Assistant Professor of History\, Randolph College \n\n\n\nThis talk explores labor conflicts during the construction of the French railway between China and Vietnam (1898–1910) as an episode in the emergence of Chinese workers as a global working class. Drawing on Chinese\, French\, and English sources\, the discussion reveals how inter-colonial competition for cheap labor and the global circulation of anti-Chinese discourses shaped labor market dynamics in China. These developments set the stage for labor to emerge as a radical force in Chinese politics. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/modern-china-lecture-series-featuring-selda-altan/
LOCATION:CGIS Knafel K262\, 1737 Cambridge Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Modern China Lecture
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Selda-altan.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250304T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250304T173000
DTSTAMP:20260608T185355
CREATED:20250130T144353Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250227T174031Z
UID:39213-1741104000-1741109400@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Modern China Lecture Series Featuring Yixin Chen — Famine and Rebellion: The Counterrevolutionary Case of the Chinese People’s Life-Saving Army in the Western Stream Villages\, 1959-1960.
DESCRIPTION:register for hybrid zoom attendance\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSpeaker: Yixin Chen\, Professor of History\, University of North Carolina Wilmington.  \n\n\n\nThis talk explores why numerous cases of counterrevolutionary groups emerged in rural China during the Great Leap Forward famine of the late 1950s\, despite the brutal and large-scale Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries campaigns earlier that decade. Focusing on the case of the “Chinese People’s Life-Saving Army\,” formed by peasants in the Western Stream (xixi) Production Brigade in southern Anhui Province in 1960\, this study highlights how the group’s grain-stealing actions were not acts of political rebellion but survival strategies during the famine. Far from fitting the state’s definition of counterrevolutionary behavior\, these actions represented collective resistance to starvation. The study argues that local authorities and judicial institutions played a central role in politically overinterpreting these struggles for food. Through the excessive use of state violence and ideological overreach\, acts of self-preservation were reframed as counterrevolutionary offenses. This mischaracterization contributed significantly to the dramatic increase in rural counterrevolutionary group cases during the Great Leap famine. \n\n\n\nYixin Chen earned his Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis and is a professor of history at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. His book\, When Food Became Scarce: How Chinese Peasants Survived the Great Leap Forward Famine (Cornell University Press\, 2024)\, provides a grassroots analysis of why some peasants survived while others in the same village\, despite facing identical food shortages\, did not. The book argues that the natural environment and lineage-based social mechanism played crucial roles in peasant survival during this prolonged ordeal. An expanded Chinese edition of the book\, titled Jingyan Jihuang (Experiencing the Famine)\, authored by Chen\, was published by the Chinese University of Hong Kong Press in January 2025. Professor Chen specializes in the socioeconomic history of modern China and has published extensively in academic journals in the U.S.\, China\, and Hong Kong\, in both English and Chinese. In 2009\, he received the Vernon Carstensen Memorial Award for the best article published in Agricultural History. He is currently working on a book that explores organized peasant counterrevolutionaries in Mao’s China. \n\n\n\nAlso via Zoom. Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_hOiD_AYoTeKJI3XpNB7Jmw \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/modern-china-lecture-series-featuring-yixin-chen-famine-and-rebellion-the-counterrevolutionary-case-of-the-chinese-peoples-life-saving-army-in-the-wester-stream-villages-1959-1960/
LOCATION:CGIS Knafel K262\, 1737 Cambridge Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Modern China Lecture
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Yixin-Chen.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260224T123000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260224T140000
DTSTAMP:20260608T185355
CREATED:20260203T192334Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260222T211405Z
UID:44201-1771936200-1771941600@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:***POSTPONED*** Modern China Lecture Series featuring Xiaobo Lü — Domination and Mobilization: The Rise and Fall of Political Parties in China’s Republican Era
DESCRIPTION:***DUE TO INCLEMENT WEATHER\, THIS TALK IS POSTPONED UNTIL A FUTURE DATE***Speaker: Xiaobo Lü\, Associate Professor\, Department of Political Science\, University of California\, BerkeleyXiaobo Lü is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California\, Berkeley. His research explores the relationships between fiscal policies\, party-building\, and state-society relations in authoritarian regimes\, particularly in China. He is particularly interested in the formation and functioning of political parties and institutions in authoritarian regimes across both historical and contemporary contexts. Xiaobo Lü earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University in 2011. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/modern-china-lecture-series-featuring-xiaobo-lu-domination-and-mobilization-the-rise-and-fall-of-political-parties-in-chinas-republican-era/
LOCATION:MA
CATEGORIES:FCCS Modern China,Modern China Lecture
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/xiaobo-lu.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260226T173000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260226T184500
DTSTAMP:20260608T185355
CREATED:20260109T141321Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260129T185406Z
UID:44002-1772127000-1772131500@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Modern China Lecture Series featuring Micah Muscolino — Remaking the Earth\, Exhausting the People: The Burden of Conservation in Modern China
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Micah Muscolino\, Professor and Paul G. Pickowicz Endowed Chair in Modern Chinese History\, University of California San Diego \n\n\n\nFrom the 1940s to the 1960s\, soil and water conservation measures remade both the arid\, erosion-prone landscape of China’s Loess Plateau and the lives of rural people. Drawing from his recent book\, Micah Muscolino discusses how the Chinese state imposed the burden of conservation on rural communities and they navigated those demands. Weaving together archival research and oral history interviews\, Muscolino’s multitiered investigation uncovers relationships between the forces of nature\, Chinese state policies\, and the embodied experiences of rural men and women. This approach highlights the contestations and compromises that the state’s environmental interventions triggered in rural society. Because modern China’s revolutionary transformations altered human relationships with the natural world\, as Muscolino demonstrates\, understanding that history from the perspectives of China’s common people requires sustained attention to their everyday interactions with the environment. \n\n\n\nMicah Muscolino is Professor and Pickowicz Endowed Chair in modern Chinese history at the University of California\, San Diego. His publications include Remaking the Earth\, Exhausting the People: The Burden of Conservation in Modern China (University of Washington Press\, 2025) and the forthcoming edited volume Revolutionary Natures: Grassroots Environmental Histories of China’s Mao Era (University of Washington Press\, 2026).   \n\n\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/modern-china-lecture-series-featuring-micah-muscolino/
LOCATION:Room K354\, CGIS Knafel\, 1737 Cambridge St\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:FCCS Modern China,Modern China Lecture
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/muscolino.jpg
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