BEYOND THE BAMBOO CURTAIN: SOCIALIST CHI

The goal of this course is to examine how Mao-era China (1949-1976) was engaged in cross-border exchange among revolutionary movements in the Global South, Western intellectuals, its diaspora community, and other socialist states. This course may be of interest both to students specializing in modern Chinese history and to students concentrating on other geographic regions who wish to gain new insights on global liberation movements and de-center Cold War narratives from a focus on US-Soviet conflict. Over the course of the semester we will examine a range of secondary scholarship and primary sources (in translation) that show how foreign observers engaged with Mao-era China as a civilizational other and how Chinese officials reimagined the “New China” after 1949 as a political, economic, and cultural entity on a global stage. Through written work and an in-class workshop, we will develop methodological tools for writing about China’s recent and highly contentious past.