Entwined Destinies：America and China and the History of the Present

Wed, Oct. 12, 2016
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM
UCLA Powell Library

Talk by Gordon H. Chang, Stanford University

In this special lecture, Gordon Chang will speak about his book, Fateful Ties：A History of America’s Preoccupation with China （Harvard University Press：2015）that studies the long history of America-China relations. Chang covers this history from Jamestown to today and gives historical context for the current American fixation with China. He suggests that this fascination continues centuries of American interest in China, an interest that is peculiar to the United States. This study builds on his earlier work on Sino-American relations and Asian American history. Chang’s books include Friends and Enemies：The United States, China, and the Soviet Union, 1948-1972; Morning Glory, Evening Shadow：Yamato Ichihashi and His Internment Writing, 1942-1945; Asian Americans and Politics：Perspectives, Experiences; Chinese American Voices From the Gold Rush to the Present（University of California Press, 2006）; and Asian American Art：A History, 1850-1970（SUP, 2008）.

Gordon H. Chang is an Oliver H. Palmer Professor in Humanities and Professor of History at Stanford University. His research focuses on the history of United States-East Asia relations and on Asian American history.
 

RSVP REQUIRED:

http://chang-aasc.eventbrite.com

Abrogation and Its Discontents:
Towards New Paradigms of PRC Law and the 1949 Revolution

Thurs, Oct. 13, 2016
2:00 PM - 3:45 PM
Bunche Hall 10383

Talk by Glenn Tiffert, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Fired by ideological zeal, in 1949 the Chinese Communist Party promptly abrogated the Nationalist legal system by fiat, vowing to erect an authentically revolutionary successor in its place. Ever since, official sources have portrayed abrogation as nothing less than the opening gambit in the PRC legal system’s creation.

Scholars remain largely in the thrall of that narrative. Abrogation lies at the core of their conceptual armature, which grounds the legal system’s identity in a lineage shorn of Chinese sources beyond the CCP. This distorts their grasp of the 1949 revolution, and of the origins, trajectory, and character of the legal system, and tends to reduce PRC legal history to little more than a branch of Party history. 

The talk challenges this way of seeing and the creation myths that spring from it.

Glenn Tiffert is the Distinguished Post-Doctoral Fellow in Residence in the Study of China at the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests center on 20th century China, Chinese legal history, and computational analyses of modern Chinese textual corpora. He has published on the Chinese judiciary, Chinese constitutionalism, and current legal affairs.