Please note: This bibliography does not cover all of the works cited in the object biographies. It is an indicative list of further readings on the history of the Mao period, designed for English-language speakers hoping to find out more about this part of Chinese history. The list also does not cover the rich literature on PRC history published in Chinese and other languages. Where applicable, this literature is cited in object biographies.
Table of Contents
- Teaching PRC history
- Overview works and source collections
- Selected online resources
- Selected research literature
1. Teaching PRC history
Please see the special issue 'PRC History in the Classroom' edited by Brian DeMare and Covell Meyskens and published in the PRC History Review. The issue includes a selection of helpful essays all of which are open access and available via: http://prchistory.org/review-august-2019/
2. Overview works and source collections
Cheek, Timothy (ed.). A Critical Introduction to Mao. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
-------- Mao Zedong and China's Revolutions: A Brief History with Documents. New York: Palgrave, 2008.
Chen, Janet, Cheng Peikai, Michael Lestz and Jonathan Spence (eds.). The Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2014.
Cook, James, Joshua Goldstein, Matthew Johnson, and Sigrid Schmalzer (eds.). Visualizing Modern China. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2014.
Esherick, Joseph. Ancestral Leaves: A Family Journey through Chinese History. Oakland, CA.: University of California Press, 2011.
Harrison, Henrietta. Inventing the Nation: China. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011.
Karl, Rebecca. Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth-century World: A Concise History. Durham, NC.: Duke University Press, 2013.
MacFarquhar, Roderick and Michael Schoenhals. Mao's Last Revolution. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2008.
Meisner, Maurice. Mao's China and After: A History of the People's Republic. New York: Free Press, 1986.
Mitter, Rana. A Bitter Revolution: China's Struggle with the Modern World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Mitter, Rana. Modern China: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Pomeranz, Kenneth and Steven Topik. The World that Trade Created: Society, Culture and the World Economy: 1400 to the Present. New York: Routledge, 2018.
Schoenhals, Michael (ed.). China's Cultural Revolution, 1966-69: Not a Dinner Party. London: Routledge, 2015.
Walder, Andrew G. China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2017.
Wasserstrom, Jeffrey N. (ed.). The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
Wemheuer, Felix. A Social History of Maoist China: Conflict and Change, 1949-1976. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.
3. Selected online resources
Asia for Educators website. Includes primary sources, timelines, sample syllabi and other resources: http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/
Chinese Posters and photos collection at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/chinesepostersnet/
Chinese Posters and Photographs Collection, Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen: http://www.kb.dk/images/billed/2010/okt/billeder/subject4530/en?page=1
CR/10 project. Oral history interviews of the Cultural Revolution, 1966-76: http://culturalrevolution.pitt.edu/
English edition of the official PRC magazine Peking Review: https://www.marxists.org/subject/china/peking-review/index.htm
English edition of the official PRC pictorial China Pictorial. Includes issues from 1966 to 1977. International Center of Photography: http://emuseum.icp.org/ (search through search bar)
Everyday life in Maoist China. A collection of photographs, paintings and videos: https://everydaylifeinmaoistchina.org
MIT Visualizing Cultures project. Includes image-driven scholarly essays, lesson plans and other resources on Chinese and Japanese history: https://visualizingcultures.mit.edu/home/index.html
Morning Sun. Online resource and film about the history of the Cultural Revolution: http://www.morningsun.org
PRC History Document of the Month. A series of primary sources (mostly in Chinese) curated by Michael Schoenhals. Each document is accompanied by an introductory essay: http://prchistory.org/document-of-the-month/
Social History of China, 1949-79. A collection of short essays and Chinese primary sources curated by Prof Michael Schoenhals: https://projekt.ht.lu.se/rereso/
The Maoist Legacy Project database (requires registration, non-commercial): https://maoistlegacy.de/
The Wilson Center’s Chinese Foreign Policy Database. A collection of primary sources from Chinese and international archives (often with English translation) from 1949 to 1989. https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/theme/chinese-foreign-policy-database
For an overview of further resources please see the PRC History Group's website: http://prchistory.org/links-and-resources/
4. Selected research literature
Altehenger, Jennifer. Legal Lessons: Popularizing Laws in the People's Republic of China, 1949-1989. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2018.
Brown, Jeremy. City Versus Countryside in Mao's China: Negotiating the Divide. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Brown, Jeremy and Matthew D. Johnson (eds.). Maoism at the Grassroots Everyday Life in China's Era of High Socialism. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2015.
Brown, Jeremy and Paul Pickowicz (eds.). Dilemmas of Victory: The Early Years of the People's Republic of China. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2010.
Cheek, Timothy. The Intellectual in Modern Chinese History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Coderre, Laurence. ‘A Necessary Evil: Conceptualizing the Socialist Commodity under Mao’. Comparative Studies in Society and History vol. 61, no. 1 (2019): 23-49.
Cook, Alexander (ed.). Mao's Little Red Book: A Global History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Cook, Alexander. The Cultural Revolution on Trial: Mao and the Gang Of Four. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
DeMare, Brian James. Mao's Cultural Army: Drama Troupes in China's Rural Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
-------- Land Wars: The Story of China's Agrarian Revolution. Stanford, CA.: Stanford University Press, 2019.
Diamant, Neil J. Revolutionizing the Family: Politics, Love, and Divorce in Urban and Rural China, 1949-1968. Oakland, CA.: University of California Press, 2000.
Dikötter, Frank. Worship of the Tangible: Things Modern and Everyday Life in China. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.
Engman, Puck and Daniel Leese (eds.). Victims, Perpetrators and the Role of Law in Post-Mao China: A Case-Study Approach. Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2018.
Esherick, Joseph, Paul Pickowicz and Andrew Walder (eds.). The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History. Stanford, CA.: Stanford University Press, 2006.
Evans, Harriet, and Stephanie Donald (eds.). Picturing Power in the People's Republic of China. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 1999.
Eyferth, Jacob. Eating Rice from Bamboo Roots: The Social History of a Community of Handicraft Papermakers in Rural Sichuan, 1920-2000. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2009.
Gerth, Karl. China Made: Consumer Culture and the Creation of the Nation. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2004.
Hershatter, Gail. The Gender of Memory: Rural Women and China's Collective Past. Oakland, CA.: University of California Press, 2013.
-------- Women and China's Revolutions. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019.
Ho, Denise Y. Curating Revolution: Politics on Display in Mao's China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
Ho, Denise Y. and Jie Li. ‘From Landlord Manor to Red Memorabilia Reincarnations of a Chinese Museum Town’. Modern China. vol. 42, no. 1 (2016): 3-37.
Landsberger, Stefan, Anchee Min, Duo Duo. Chinese Propaganda Posters. Köln: Taschen, 2015.
Leese, Daniel. Mao Cult: Rhetoric and Ritual in China's Cultural Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Li, Jie. Shanghai Homes: Palimpsests of Private Life. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.
Li, Jie and Zhang Enhua. Red Legacies in China: Cultural Afterlives of the Communist Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2016.
Matthew D. Johnson. ‘From Peace to the Panthers: PRC Engagement with African American Transnational Networks, 1949–1979’. Past & Present vol. 218 (2013): 233–257.
Mittler, Barbara. A Continuous Revolution: Making Sense of Cultural Revolution Culture. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2016.
Perry, Elizabeth J. Anyuan: Mining China's Revolutionary Tradition. Oakland, CA.: University of California Press, 2012.
-------- Patrolling the Revolution: Worker Militias, Citizenship, and the Modern Chinese State. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007.
Schmalzer, Sigrid. Red Revolution, Green Revolution: Scientific Farming in Socialist China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016.
-------- The People's Peking Man: Popular Science and Human Identity in Twentieth-Century China. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008.
Schoenhals, Michael. Doing Things with Words in Chinese Politics: Five Studies. Oakland, CA.: Institute for East Asian Studies, University of California, 1992.
-------- Spying for the People: Mao’s Secret Agents, 1949-1967. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Smith, Aminda M. Thought Reform and China's Dangerous Classes: Reeducation, Resistance, and the People. Lanham: Rowman et Littlefield, 2013.
Smith, S.A.. ‘Talking Toads and Chinless Ghosts: The Politics of “Superstitious” Rumours in the People's Republic of China, 1961-1965’. The American Historical Review vol. 111, no. 2 (2006): 405-427.
-------- ‘Local Cadres Confront the Supernatural: The Politics of Holy Water (Shenshui) in the PRC, 1949-1966’. The China Quarterly vol. 188, no. 1 (2006): 999-1022.
Sorace, Christian P., Ivan Franceschini and Nicholas Loubere (eds.). Afterlives of Chinese Communism Political Concepts from Mao to Xi. Canberra: ANU Press; New York: Verso Books, 2019.
Strauss, Julia. ‘Introduction: In Search of PRC History’. The China Quarterly 188 (December 2006): 855–69.
-------- ‘Morality, Coercion and State Building by Campaign in the Early PRC: Regime Consolidation and After, 1949–1956.’ The China Quarterly 188 (December 2006): 891–912.
Strauss, Julia (ed.). The China Quarterly Special Issue: The History of the People's Republic of China, 1949-1976. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Volland, Nicolai. Socialist Cosmopolitanism The Chinese Literary Universe, 1945-1965. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017.
Wang, Zheng. Finding Women in the State: A Socialist Feminist Revolution in the People's Republic of China, 1949-1964. Oakland, CA.: University of California Press, 2017.
Wang, Helen. Chairman Mao Badges: Symbols and Slogans of the Cultural Revolution. London: The British Museum Press, 2008.
Wilcox, Emily. Revolutionary Bodies: Chinese Dance and the Socialist Legacy. Oakland, CA.: University of California Press, 2019.