Jeffrey Wasserstrom

Last updated
Jeffrey Wasserstrom
OccupationHistorian
Language English, Chinese
Education B.A., University of California, Santa Cruz, M.A, Harvard University and Ph.D, University of California, Berkeley
Genre History
Subject Sinology, Social history

Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom is an American historian of modern China. He is Chancellor's Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. Wasserstrom's research interests began with the role of student protest and have grown to include the social history of China and comparative social history. [1]

Contents

Education

Wasserstrom received a B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1982, a M.A. from Harvard University in 1984, and a Ph.D from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989. [2]

Career

Before joining the faculty at the UC Irvine in 2006, Wasserstrom taught at the University of Kentucky and Indiana University. [3] In 2009, Wasserstrom became editor of Journal of Asian Studies. [4]

In his first monograph, Student Protests in the 20th Century: The View from Shanghai, Wasserstrom pays particular attention to symbols used by student protesters in Shanghai. Wasserstrom argues that students became particularly good at mimicking the practices of government officials, which made their causes seem legitimate. [5] David Strand praised the monograph as a "major contribution" because it "offers a model for rethinking the late imperial, Republican and Communist periods as a historical unit conditioned by indigenous and global forces, and explained by Sinological and comparative models." [6]

In 2009, Routledge published Wasserstrom's book Global Shanghai, an analysis of the globalization of Shanghai during seven 25-year periods, and of the popular image of Shanghai as the hub of cultural interaction between China and other countries since 1850. [7] Wasserstrom argues that, while historians should be suspicious of those who propagate this image, they should not underestimate the city's potential for cultural innovation. [8]

Alongside these books, Wasserstrom has written articles for, and edited, several anthologies. [9]

Wasserstrom has lamented that Westerners know very little about China, [10] and has written extensively for a popular audience in Time magazine, Newsweek , The Nation , the Los Angeles Times , and The New York Times . [11] He is also the co-founder of a blog, The China Beat, [12] and has written for the Huffington Post. [13]

Wasserstrom's book China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know was first published in 2010 and a second edition came out in 2013. [14] The book contains an overview of recent Chinese history and includes his attempts to counter what he sees as western misunderstandings about China, including misunderstandings about the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 [15] and China's one-child policy. [16] Wasserstrom argues that the most common misunderstanding of China is that China is culturally homogeneous. Wasserstrom's view is that, like the United States, China has enormous ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity. [17] The book also contains an overview of the issues that China was facing at the time of writing. [18] The book had mixed reviews. Barrett L. McCormick, for instance, had some misgivings about Wasserstrom's claim that Mao Zedong was, like Andrew Jackson, a man of the people who committed some atrocities, but McCormick concluded that "if someone asks you to recommend a first book on China that he or she can read on the plane, this is the best book available." [19]

Publications

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References

  1. ↑ "Jeffrey Wasserstrom," UC Irvine Department of History, accessed April 21, 2014, http://www.humanities.uci.edu/history/faculty_profile_wasserstrom.php. "Jeffrey Wasserstrom," Amazon, accessed April 22, 2014,https://www.amazon.com/Jeffrey-N.-Wasserstrom/e/B001IQWGPW
  2. ↑ UC Irvine Department of History, "Jeffrey Wasserstrom."
  3. ↑ UC Irvine Department of History, "Jeffrey Wasserstrom."
  4. ↑ "The Journal of Asian Studies (JAS)," The Association for Asian Studies, https://www.asian-studies.org/publications/JAS.htm. UC Irvine Department of History, "Jeffrey Wasserstrom."
  5. ↑ Paul Bailey, "Student Protests in 20th Century China," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 56, no. 3 (1993):621-622.
  6. ↑ David Strand, "Student Protests in Twentieth-Century China: The View from Shanghai by Jeffrey Wasserstrom," The Journal of Asian Studies 51, no. 3 (August 1992): 660-662.
  7. ↑ Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Global Shanghai, 1850-2010, (New York: Routledge, 2009), 11.
  8. ↑ Wasserstrom, Global Shanghai, 13-14.
  9. ↑ "Jeffrey Wasserstrom," Amazon.
  10. ↑ Jeffrey Wasserstrom, China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), xvi.
  11. ↑ UC Irvine Department of History, "Jeffrey Wasserstrom."
  12. ↑ UC Irvine Department of History, "Jeffrey Wasserstrom." "Who We Are," The China Beat, accessed April 21, 2014,http://www.thechinabeat.org/?page_id=7
  13. ↑ "Jeffrey Wasserstrom | HuffPost". www.huffpost.com. Retrieved 2023-04-18.
  14. ↑ Wasserstrom, China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, xvi.
  15. ↑ Wasserstrom, China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, 80.
  16. ↑ Wasserstrom, China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, 104-106.
  17. ↑ Wasserstrom, China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, 114-125.
  18. ↑ Wasserstrom, China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know,113-148.
  19. ↑ Barret L. McCormick, "China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know," The Journal of Asian Studies 70, no. 1 (February 2011): 216-218.

Bibliography

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