Taking China Seriously: Global Maoism and Asian Studies in the Long Sixties

This presentation looks back at the only other time in the last two centuries when Asia, as today, was the focus of sustained global interest: the 1960s and 1970s, the era of Global Maoism and wars of liberation. Through an analysis of the formation and dissolution of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars (CCAS), this presentation will illustrate how China,(mis)perceived, imagined, or experienced, was not only and not simply the location of a utopia that could be deployed by idealistic youth to define more locally-specific goals. Rather, that "China" also represented a short-lived radical political alternative, one that forced the people who took it seriously to rethink their relationship to work, social roles, daily practices, and the production of knowledge.Fabio Lanza is Associate Professor, Dept. of History, at University of Arizona. His talk is part of the APSI Fall 2014 Speaker Series.