Required:

Marc Blecher, China Against the Tides, chs. 1-2. (These chapters are a review of the Chinese revolution and the Mao era, so if you are familiar with these topics, you can probably skim them.)

Stuart R. Schram, “"Mao Zedong a Hundred Years On: The Legacy of a Ruler,” The China Quarterly  No. 137 (Mar., 1994), pp. 125-143. JSTOR

"Comrade Mao Zedong's Historical Role and Mao Zedong Thought” from Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People's Republic of China, Adopted by the Sixth Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on June 27, 1981. LINK

Hu Jintao, "Speech at a forum in commemoration of Comrade Mao Zedong's 110th birth anniversary," December 26, 2003. LINK

"Mao: The Unknown Story" by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday:

• Read the entry about the book on Wikipedia. LINK (!?)
• To get a flavor of the book, do one of the following:
  • Read a chapter from the book: the library has several copies (DS778.M3 C38 2005)
  • Read the on-line version of the first chapter: LINK
  • Listen to one of the interviews with the authors on my China Links site: LINK
• Read one of the starred reviews (*) on my China Links site: LINK

Read one of the following reviews of Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Mao's Last Revolution (Harvard University Press, 2006):

• Jonathan Spence, "China's Great Terror," The New York Review of Books, September 21, 2006. LINK TBA
• Andrew J. Nathan, "The Bloody Enigma," The New Republic, Nov. 21, 2006. LINK TBA
• or read the book itself... [693pp.]

Students will also be assigned to read one of the following reflecting recent scholarship on the Maoist era:

• Elizabeth J. Perry, "Shanghai's Strike Wave of 1957," The China Quarterly, No. 137. (Mar., 1994), pp. 1-27. JSTOR
• Wang Zheng, " Dilemmas of Inside Agitators: Chinese State Feminists in 1957," The China Quarterly (December 2006), No. 188, pp. 913-932. Link
• Thomas P. Bernstein, “Mao Zedong and the Famine of 1959-1960: A Study in Wilfulness,” China Quarterly, no. 186 (June 2006), pp. 421-445. Link
• Kimberley Ens Manning, "The Gendered Politics of Woman-work: Rethinking Radicalism in the Great Leap Forward, Modern China, July 2006 32: 349-384.
• William A. Joseph, "A Tragedy of Good Intentions: Post-Mao Views of the Great Leap Forward," Modern China, Vol. 12, No. 4. (Oct., 1986), pp. 419-457. JSTOR
• Andrew Walder and Yan Su, "The Cultural Revolution in the Countryside: Scope, Timing and Human Impact." China  Quarterly, 173 (March 2003), pp. 75-99, LINK
• Joseph W. Esherick, Paul G. Pickowitz, and Andrew G. Walder ed., The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History (2006) .