Revolutionary Routine Part II: A Roundtable Conversation with Aminda Smith, Fabio Lanza, Jeremy Brown, Yinghong Cheng, and Yiching Wu

This multi-day workshop brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to undertake intensive reading and discussion of selected ‘grassroots sources’ from the Fudan Social Life Data and Research Center. Through systematic readings of family letters, personnel dossiers, private diaries, work notes, and work unit archives, we explore questions of how the routines of political Maoism were enacted, mediated, and performed in the most mundane settings of Maoist society.

In Part II of this two-day event, Aminda Smith and Fabio Lanza will host a conversation with Jeremy Brown, Yinghong Cheng, and Yiching Wu on the state of grassroots Chinese history. At at moment when access to the official archives is increasingly tenuous, this roundtable discussion brings together several pioneers in grassroots methodologies to exchange insights on the opportunities, challenges, and lessons of working across the official and non-official archive.

Aminda Smith, Associate Professor of History

Michigan State University

Fabio Lanza, Professor of History

University of Arizona

Jeremy Brown, Associate Professor of History

Simon Fraser University

Yinghong Cheng, Professor of History

Delaware State University

Yiching Wu, Associate Professor of East Asian Studies

University of Toronto