Interviews with Authors
Curated by Ben Kletzer, Ph.D. Candidate, University of California – San Diego
This site presents interviews with Twentieth-Century China (TCC) authors. In these interviews, authors discuss a wide variety of topics, including what brought them to focus on the subjects of their articles, their wider research interests, the nature and use of their sources, and theoretical approaches. The goals of this feature are to trace current research trends and new emerging fields and to introduce both young and established scholars engaged in the study of China in the long twentieth century.
These overall goals, together with a desire to represent a wide variety of voices and themes, motivate the selection of authors to be interviewed.
Each interview includes a link for free access to the article under discussion.
An Interview with Xiaoxuan Wang 
This interview is with Xiaoxuan Wang, the author of “Solving the ‘Religious Problem’: The Great Leap Forward of ‘Religious Work’ and Protestant Communities in Pingyang, Wenzhou in 1958,” which appears in the January 2024 issue of Twentieth-Century China. Xiaoxuan Wang is an assistant professor of Chinese history at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
An Interview with Benno Weiner
This interview is with Benno Weiner, the author of “‘This Absolutely Is Not a Hui Rebellion!’: The Ethnopolitics of Great Nationality Chauvinism in Early Maoist China,” which appears in the October 2023 issue of Twentieth-Century China. Benno Weiner is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon University.
An Interview with Emily Wilcox
This interview is with Emily Wilcox, the author of “Sino-Japanese Cultural Diplomacy in the 1950s: The Making and Reception of the Matsuyama Ballet’s The White-Haired Girl,” which appears in the May 2023 issue of Twentieth-Century China. Emily Wilcox is an Associate Professor of Chinese studies and the director of the Chinese Studies Program at the College of William & Mary.
An Interview with Sei Jeong Chin
This interview is with Sei Jeong Chin, the author of “The Korean War, Anti-US Propaganda, and the Marginalization of Dissent in China, 1950–1953,” which appears in the January 2023 issue of Twentieth-Century China. Sei Jeong Chin is a professor in the Division of International Studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, Korea.
An Interview with Rachel Leow
This interview is with Rachel Leow, the author of “The Patriarchy of Diaspora: Race Fantasy and Gender Blindness in Chen Da’s Studies of the Nanyang Chinese,” which appears in the October 2022 issue of Twentieth-Century China. Rachel Leow is an Associate Professor in Modern East Asian History in the Faculty of History at Cambridge University, and a Fellow in History at Murray Edwards College.
An Interview with Yue Meng
This interview is with Yue Meng, the author of “Unspeakable Ecology: Eco-science and Environmental Awareness through Thick Inquiries, 1910s–1980s,” which appears in the May 2022 issue of Twentieth-Century China. Yue Meng is an Associate Professor and Associate Graduate Chair in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto.
An Interview with Xavier Paulès and David Serfass
This interview is with Xavier Paulès and David Serfass, guest editors of the special issue of Twentieth-Century China entitled “State Building through Political Disunity in Republican China,” published in January 2022. Xavier Paulès is an associate professor at EHESS (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences) in Paris. David Serfass is assistant professor of Chinese and East Asian modern history at Inalco (National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations, Paris) and research fellow at IFRAE (French Research Institute on East Asia).
An Interview with Rachel Hui-chi Hsu
This interview is with Rachel Hui-chi Hsu, the author of “Spiritual Mother and Intellectual Sons: Emma Goldman and Young Chinese Anarchists,” which appears in the October 2021 issue of Twentieth-Century China. Dr. Rachel Hui-chi Hsu is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at National Chengchi University, Taipei.
An Interview with Juliane Noth
This interview is with Juliane Noth, the author of “Militiawomen, Red Guards, and Images of Female Militancy in Maoist China,” which appears in the May 2021 issue of Twentieth-Century China. Dr. Juliane Noth is a Heisenberg Fellow at the University of Hamburg, Germany.
An Interview with Hsiao-Chun Wu
This interview is with Hsiao-Chun Wu, the author of “Collecting Theater in Republican Beijing: Research Methods and the Birth of Chinese Opera Studies in Early Twentieth-Century China,” which appears in the January 2021 issue of Twentieth-Century China. Hsiao-Chun Wu (PhD, History, University of California, Los Angeles) is an independent scholar of modern China.
An Interview with Federica Ferlanti
This interview is with Federica Ferlanti, the author of “Educators and Power Brokers: Political Mobilization and Violence in Wannian County, Jiangxi Province, 1926–1935,” which appears in the October issue of Twentieth-Century China. Federica Ferlanti is a lecturer in Modern Chinese History at Cardiff University.
An Interview with Timothy Cheek
An interview with Timothy Cheek, who is guest editor of the special May 2020 issue of Twentieth-Century China entitled, “The Crucible of 1957: Place and Perspective in Mao’s Revolution.” Timothy Cheek is director of the Institute of Asian Research and professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs and Department of History at the University of British Columbia.
An Interview with Xiaobing Tang
An interview with Xiaobing Tang, the author of “Radio, Sound Cinema, and Community Singing: The Making of a New Sonic Culture in Modern China,” which appears in the January 2020 issue of Twentieth-Century China. Xiaobing Tang is Sin Wai Kin Professor of Chinese Humanities at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
An Interview with Soonyi Lee
An interview with Soonyi Lee, the author of “In Revolt against Positivism, the Discovery of Culture: The Liang Qichao Group’s Cultural Conservatism in China after the First World War,” which appears in the October 2019 issue of Twentieth-Century China. Soonyi Lee is an Assistant Professor in the School of Liberal Arts at Mercy College.
