The Other Cultural Revolution: The Academic Uprising of the American China Scholar in the 1960s
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2012
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Haverford College. Department of History
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Thesis
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The History Department Senior Thesis Prize
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eng
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Open Access
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Abstract
This thesis explores the ways in which young American China scholars, incensed by the outrages of the Vietnam War and frustrated with the political timidity of their older professors, used the Chinese Cultural Revolution as a source of inspiration for their own scholarly revolution. In particular, it focuses on those China scholars who joined The Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars, a coalition of graduate students and young professors in East Asian Studies seeking a new, more empathetic approach to the study of Asia. Eager to identify with the Chinese masses, these scholars imagined themselves to be in league with Mao Zedong and his Red Guards, fighting against similarly bureaucratic and politically backward structures of authority at home. In telling the story of these revolutionary academics, this thesis supplements published reports with interviews and archival sources to illustrate the larger goals and motivations behind the mistranslation of such a disastrous era in modern Chinese history.