Description
Overview
This course uses the life and legacy of Mao Zedong (1893-1976) as a way to navigate China’s tumultuous history from the end of the Nineteenth Century to the end of the Twentieth Century. Mao is generally acknowledged as a towering figure in Chinese history whose personality and ideology continue to influence national and world politics today.
And yet a careful study of China’s twentieth-century history reveals the limits, as well as the extent, of the influence of a “revolutionary” such as Mao Zedong. In this course, students will use primary and secondary texts to sketch out the broader social and cultural landscape of modern China and evaluate the historical significance of Mao’s life and the Maoist ideology that was his legacy.