China's Socialist Dreams

A history of the People's Republic of China under Mao in its context. We’ll explore the appeal of anarchism and socialism in the early 20th century and experiments in rural utopianism and worker autonomy. To understand the Chinese Communist Party, we’ll examine it as upstart, revolutionary vanguard, strategic ally, army, and state builder. Using new research on 1950s-70s Chinese society, we’ll ask how the Maoist party-state reached the lives of urbanites and farmers; affected gender relations and constructions of sexuality, age, and family; and shifted formulations of ethnicity, race and China’s place in the world.