The Son also rises: Personal Reading Stratification of Educated Youth Generation during the Cultural Revolution (1968-1978)
Prof. Dr. Peidong Sun, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York (USA), The Department of History
Abstract:
This lecture will show that firstly, the hunger for books and knowledge of the educated youths was stratified, and youths from city cadres and intellectuals’ families constituted the most important group acting out personal reading activity during the Cultural Revolution. They found ways and means to obtain books to read. In comparison and contrast, a thirst for reading was not shown by the children of ordinary families; secondly, with the outbreak and the volatile development of the Cultural Revolution, the systematic school education was temporarily halted disturbed. Some parents were also shocked by the circumstances and therefore forced to carry out a loose discipline on their children. Among the youths, those who had a collection of books or who had ways to obtain books started to enjoy their free reading. From “Readings of Red books" they turned to reading foreign content, subsumed as “Western Humanism”(西方人文主义). Thus began a period of diversified reading and self-study. Thirdly, with the expansion of the Sent-down Campaign, books and newspapers, especially "internal books" moved from the cities to the rural areas, and from the elites to the peasants and workers.
Putting stratified practices of reading and re-production of cultural capital into the frame of the re-production of social classes, this article aims to re-interpret the personal reading of educated youths from Beijing and Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution, arguing that the activity of reading is a dual process that contains both the reaffirmation of cultural value and the accumulation of cultural capital. Adresse Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies (CATS) Voßstrasse 2 69115 Heidelberg Homepage Veranstaltung https://www.cats.uni-heidelberg.de Veranstalter Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies (CATS) Homepage Veranstalter https://www.cats.uni-heidelberg.de Kontakt contact@cats.uni-heidelberg.de Alle Termine der Veranstaltung 'Reading in Socialist China — from Mao to Xi': 4 Lectures by CATS Digital Fellow, Professor SUN Peidong on Reading in Socialist China—from Mao to Xi
Professor SUN is the Michael J. Zak associate professor of history for China and Asia-Pacific Studies at Cornell University. After being an associate professor of history at Fudan University (Shanghai), she was a visiting professor at Sciences Po and European Institutes for Chinese studies in Paris from Feb.2020 to June 2021. She is a social and cultural historian of the post-1949 period. Her research has centred on the history and contemporary implications of Chinese everyday life and politics. She has published on topics such as global reading practices, the politics of fashion, and mate choices in China. Peidong is currently working on a book tentatively entitled "Underground Epistemologies: How the Cultural Revolution Shaped the Xi Jinping Generation.”
Professor Sun has been a Digital Research Fellow at Heidelberg since the summer term of 2021. Dienstag, 11. Januar 2022, 14.15 Uhr The Son also rises: Personal Reading Stratification of Educated Youth Generation during the Cultural Revolution (1968-1978) Prof. Dr. Peidong Sun, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York (USA), The Department of History
Dienstag, 18. Januar 2022, 14.15 Uhr Study the “Nine Polemics”: Production, transmission, and consumption of a Maoist Political Campaign (1963-1964) Prof. Dr. Peidong Sun, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York (USA), The Department of History
Dienstag, 25. Januar 2022, 14.15 Uhr Censors at work: mechanism of censorship in China under Mao (1949-1976) Prof. Dr. Peidong Sun, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York (USA), The Department of History
Dienstag, 01. Februar 2022, 14.15 Uhr A brief intro to reading practices in China after 1978 Prof. Dr. Peidong Sun, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York (USA), The Department of History
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