Speaker: Esther Hu, Assistant Professor, Boston University
Chair: William Kirby, T. M. Chang Professor of China Studies; Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration; Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor; Director, Harvard China Fund

Soong Mayling and Wartime China, 1937-1945: Deploying Words as Weapons focuses on the First Lady of China’s timely and critical contributions in the areas of war, women’s work, and diplomacy during China’s War of Resistance as inflected through gender. This book explores Soong Mayling through her own words by examining her speeches, essays, letters, telegrams, and news reports during the war period. How did Madame Chiang Kai-shek’s gender identity shape her interactions with other Chinese women, the male military and political leadership in the Republic of China, and the broader global public? How did Confucianism’s cardinal virtues and Chinese Christianity converge in Soong Mayling’s work and worldview? What were her main contributions as Secretary-General of the Chinese Air Force? Drawing on Chinese archival materials such as Chiang Kai-shek’s diaries and other records around the world, Esther Hu provides a historically informed perspective of the First Lady’s legacy within the context of World War II history, international cultural and military affairs, and transnational geopolitics.

Before joining the faculty of Boston University in 2005 as an Assistant Professor in the Humanities, Professor Hu had taught at Cornell University (John S. Knight Institute, First-Year-Writing Seminars) and Chung Yuan Christian University (College of Humanities and Education).

Professor Hu is an Associate in Research at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University and a Fellow of the International History Institute at Boston University. She also teaches Reading Shakespeare in the Department of English. She is a published literary scholar and translator who regularly presents her research at academic conferences.

Lunch will be provided.