| Date | Time | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Monday, September 26, 2011 | 2:00PM - 4:00PM | The Vivian and David Campbell Conference Facility, Munk Centre For International Studies - 1 Devonshire Place |
East Asia Seminar Series
“Between 1958 and 1962, China descended into hell.” So opens Mao’s Great Famine: A History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, Frank Dikötter’s riveting of the Great Leap Forward. Using previously restricted archives, historian Dikötter reveals that under this initiative the country became the site not only of one of the most deadly mass killings of human history (at least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death) but also the greatest demolition of real estate – and catastrophe for the natural environment – in human history, as up to a third of all housing was turned to rubble and the land savaged in the maniacal pursuit of steel and other industrial accomplishments. Piecing together both the vicious machinations in the corridors of power and the everyday experiences of ordinary people, Dikötter at last gives voice to the dead and disenfranchised.
Frank Dikötter is Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong. He has published nine books on modern China, from the classic The Discourse of Race in Modern China (1992) to China before Mao: The Age of Openness (2007). Mao’s Great Famine won the 2011 Samuel Johnson Award for Non-Fiction and is short-listed for the 2011 Asia Society Book Award.
Kimberley Manning is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Concordia University. Dr. Manning has published in the China Review, Modern China, and the China Quarterly, and is co-editor of the 2011 volume: Eating Bitterness: New Perspectives on China’s Great Leap Forward and Famine. Dr. Manning is currently is completing a monograph on the Chinese women’s movement during the 1940s and 1950s and embarking on a collaborative study of Sino-Tanzanian relations.
Yiching Wu is Assistant Professor in the Department of East Asian Studies and the Asian Institute. Yiching Wu grew up in Shanghai, the People’s Republic of China. Trained as an anthropologist at the University of Chicago, his main research field is the history and culture of Mao’s China, and in particular the history of the Cultural Revolution. His scholarly interests include anthropology and history, critical theory, history of populism and radicalism, socialism and postsocialism, and politics of historical knowledge. He is currently working on a book manuscript entitled Revolution at the Margins: Social Protest and Politics of Class in China, 1966-69.
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