China since Tiananmen: History, Memory, and Nationalism
Rowena He (Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton)
Abstract:
In spring 1989, Chinese citizens across the country took to the streets calling for political reforms. The peaceful movement, highlighted by college students’ hunger strike on Tiananmen Square, ended on June 4 with the People’s Liberation Army firing on unarmed civilians. Student leaders, intellectuals, workers, and citizens were subsequently purged, imprisoned, or exiled. Tiananmen remains the most sensitive and taboo subject in China. The post-Tiananmen regime has constructed a narrative portraying the Tiananmen Movement as a Western conspiracy to weaken and divide China, hence justifying its military crackdown as necessary for stability and prosperity and paving the way for China’s rise. Drawing on her first book Tiananmen Exiles and her current book project on Chinese student nationalism in the post-89 China, Professor He’s talk will interweave personal narratives with historical contexts to illustrate the ongoing war of memory against forgetting, and the implications of this open wound on Chinese society and its relationship with the world.
Biographical Note:
Prof. Rowena He (Harvard University, USA)
Rowena He received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto and conducted her postdoctoral research at Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. Her book Tiananmen Exiles: Voices of the Struggle for Democracy in China has been named one of the Top Five China Books of 2014 by the Asia Society’s China File.
Before joining Saint Michael’s College, Rowena He had taught at Harvard University and Wellesley College. Her seminars on the 1989 Tiananmen Movement and its aftermath have earned her the Harvard University Certificate of Teaching Excellence for three consecutive years.
In addition to her scholarly work, Professor He speaks and publishes widely outside the academy. Her writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Guardian, and the Globe and Mail. She has been interviewed by various international media.
Source and further information: Harvard U, Link (20 May 2019)