The Institute for Chinese Studies presents "The Centenary of the May Fourth Movement" Lecture Series:
Aminda Smith
Associate Professor, Department of History
Michigan State University
"The True Story of Li Shunda: Thinking like a Maoist in the early People’s Republic of China"
Flyer: Aminda Smith Flyer
Abstract: Just after the revolution, a once-destitute refugee named Li Shunda was filled with hope about his future under Chinese Communism. His story became a key text in official, scholarly, and popular appraisals of Maoism, the revolution, and the history of the People’s Republic of China. Li came to stand for everything Maoism promised and all the things it failed to deliver. This talk uses letters, diaries, and other grassroots sources from the 1950s – 1970s to reread Li’s story. Professor Smith presents a sample of cases in which individuals, including Li Shunda, used Chinese Communist praxis to rethink their understanding of themselves and their worlds and to imagine radical new possibilities, inside and outside of China, voluntarily and/or by force. She argues that many current understandings of the Mao Era misidentify the roots of that revolutionary optimism and thus misread the historically specific meaning of many people’s experiences. This talk offers some alternate readings of early-PRC sources to propose a reevaluation of the significance of Maoism as a method and an epistemology.
Bio: Professor Smith specializes in the social and cultural history of Chinese Communism with broader interests in the global history of the left. Her first book, Thought Reform and China’s Dangerous Classes (2013), examined the reformatories where agents of the state worked to transform vagrants and other outcasts into new socialist citizens. Her current work re-examines the Maoist Mass Line and the associated efforts to refashion individual consciousness through intense personal encounters. She is Associate Professor at Michigan State University and Co-Director of the PRC History Group.
Free and Open to the Public
This event is supported by OSU's Department of History and by a U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant to The Ohio State University East Asian Studies Center.