Title: The Spatial and Emotional Turns: A Study of Displacement and the Chinese Baby Boomers
Lecturer: SHAO Qin (Professor, Department of History, College of New Jersey)
Chairperson: LIU Chang (Professor, Department of History, East China Normal University)
Date: 3 pm, June 11th, 2014 (Wednesday)
Venue: Room 5303, Building of School of Humanities, Minhang Campus, ECNU
Sponsor: Si-mian Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities, ECNU
Abstract of the Lecture:
Born after the civil war and during the consolidation of the new regime, the first Chinese urban baby boomers experienced various displacements in their life and career. Growing up in the 1950s when political campaigns approached one after another in rapid sequence, and coming of age in Great Leap Forward and the ensuing Cultural Revolution, they experienced the displacement of family in childhood as their parents or loved ones were forced to leave home. Further displacements arrived during their youth age, in which the baby boomers underwent going down to the countryside and returning to the city after Mao’s death. The talk explores the lack of security and certainty among the baby boomers and its great impact on individuals and China as a whole.
Brief Introduction of the Lecturer：
SHAO Qin achieved her master degree in history at East China Normal University and received her doctoral degree in history at Michigan State University. Her publications include Culturing Modernity: the Nantong Model, 1890-1930 (Stanford University Press, 2004), Shanghai Gone: Domicide and Defiance in a Chinese Megacity (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013), and dozens of articles published in the Journal of Asian Studies, Modern China, Historical Research, and etc. Her work in progress is about the displacement of P.R.C.’s first baby boomers.