Everyday Life in Mao's China

For three decades, Mao Zedong presided over one of the most ambitious social experiments in human history. This course explores everyday life in China in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s: the radical reordering of economic, political, and social relations; the shattering experiences of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution; and the evolution of a party-state which governs China up to the present. While Maoist ideology and policies were homogenizing in intent and often in effect, this course will emphasize the ways in which the experiences of the Mao era were mediated through categories like gender, social status, and ethnicity.