A brief description of the college-level (and, to an extent, pre-collegial) teaching of American history in PRC in two distinctive phases—1949-1979 (the period prior to the normalization of China-U.S. diplomatic relations) and 1979-2009 (the post-normalization period and the period of China’s reform)—with a focus on the field’s origins and evolution, curricular structure, standing in the so-called “world history” field, faculty, resources, and graduate training.
Based on the overview, I will analyze the content of American history as taught in these two phases by examining the texts used, subjects covered and interpretations given. I would also be interested in discussing the content creating process—namely, how China’s Americanists determined what themes/subjects of American history were to be taught in the classroom or put into textbooks and how they presented and interpreted the selected subjects in teaching (and/or in the designated textbooks)—and how such a process or the content per se was shaped by various factors, such as international politics, the change of China-U.S. relations, domestic politics, ideological reorientation, and the reconfiguration of new research and teaching resources (such as the change of guards between the American- and Soviet-trained experts in 1950s and 1960s, resumption of the Chinese-American educational exchange in the 1970s and 1980s, the Fulbright programs, China’s study abroad program, etc.), and the Internet.
Finally I will discuss the challenges of teaching U.S. history in
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