Rural Women under Mao: Oral Histories of China with Gail Hershatter


Today’s guest on the Harvard on China podcast is Gail Hershatter, Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California Santa Cruz.

Her research spans the history of China’s long twentieth century. She re-examines the immense societal changes of China’s communist past through oral histories of rural women.

While Mao Zedong’s mass campaigns for collectivization, anti-intellectualism and ideological purity raged in China’s coastal cities, did these rural women experience the same messages as their urban counterparts?

The “Harvard on China” podcast is hosted by James Evans at Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. Listen to more podcasts at the Fairbank Center’s SoundCloud page.