Charting their training, travels, and performances, this innovative study explores the role of the artists that roamed the Chinese countryside in support of Mao's communist revolution. DeMare traces the development of Mao's 'cultural army' from its genesis in Red Army propaganda teams to its full development as a largely civilian force composed of amateur and professional drama troupes in the early years of the PRC. Drawing from memoirs, artistic handbooks, and rare archival sources, Mao's Cultural Army uncovers the arduous and complex process of creating revolutionary dramas that would...

Xiaoping Cong examines the social and cultural significance of Chinese revolutionary legal practice in the construction of marriage and gender relations. Her book is an empirically rich investigation of the ways in which a 1943 legal dispute over an arranged marriage in a Chinese village became a legal, political and cultural exemplar on the national stage. This conceptually groundbreaking study revisits the Chinese Revolution and its impact on women and society by presenting a Chinese experience that cannot and should not be theorized in the framework of Western discourse. Taking a cultural...

This study explores the role of drama troupes tasked with roaming the countryside in support of Mao's communist revolution in China.

How did China's Communist revolution transform the nation's political culture? In this rich and vivid history of the Mao period (1949-1976), Denise Y. Ho examines the relationship between its exhibitions and its political movements. Case studies from Shanghai show how revolution was curated: museum workers collected cultural and revolutionary relics; neighborhoods, schools, and work units mounted and narrated local displays; and exhibits provided ritual space for ideological lessons and political campaigns. Using archival sources, ephemera, interviews, and other materials, Ho traces the...

How did China's Communist revolution transform the nation's political culture? In this rich and vivid history of the Mao period (1949-1976), Denise Y. Ho examines the relationship between its exhibitions and its political movements. Case studies from Shanghai show how revolution was curated: museum workers collected cultural and revolutionary relics; neighborhoods, schools, and work units mounted and narrated local displays; and exhibits provided ritual space for ideological lessons and political campaigns. Using archival sources, ephemera, interviews, and other materials, Ho traces the...

Explores the social and cultural significance of Chinese communist legal practice in constructing marriage and gender relations in the turbulent period from 1940 to 1960.

In the 1980s, a Chinese state-sponsored oral history project led to the publication of local, regional, and national histories. These histories are the basis of this innovative study of ideology formation and political mobilization, post-Cultural Revolution reconciliation, and the recovery of borderland identities in early post-Mao China.

This revisionist history of China's sent-down youth movement draws on rich archival research to show how participants in the movement - the sent-down youth, their parents, and local government officials - disregarded, circumvented, and manipulated state policy, ultimately undermining a decade-long Maoist project.