I am a specialist in Chinese history interested in a wide range of topics, ranging from the gendered symbolism of revolutions to patterns of student protest, and from the way that globalization affects urban life and popular culture to American images of Asia.  I am fascinated by seeing what light the past can shed on the present, and am committed to finding ways to reach and engage general as well as specialist audiences.

These diverse concerns show through in my teaching and my involvement in a new Irvine-based group blog/electronic magazine, "The China Beat: Blogging How the East is Read"--some of the postings from which will be incorporated, along with many other materials, in a forthcoming Rowman & Littlefield book, China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance, which I am co-editing with two UCI colleagues. They also shaped the two books I've written recently, China’s Brave New World—And Other Tales for Global Times(Indiana University Press, 2007) and Global Shanghai, 1850-2010 (forthcoming from Routledge).   China’s Brave New World is an experimental work, intended for general educated readers as well as specialists.  It is written largely in the first person, has elements of reportage and travel writings, and is often playful in tone, even when I’m grappling with serious issues, such as the strategies that the Chinese Communist Party uses to keep popular discontent from coalescing into a broad-based mass movement like the one it faced in 1989.  Global Shanghai is a more straightforward book, except for the unusual fact that it is by a cultural historian yet ends with a look at the future.  It is, once again, aimed very much at general readers as well as specialists, and is one of the first efforts by an academic to tie together the past and present of a fascinating city that has often played a crucial role in connecting China to the world.

Many of my previous publications took more typical academic forms.  This was true of my first book, Student Protests in Twentieth-Century China (Stanford University Press, 1991), and articles I contributed to periodicals such as the China Quarterly, Urban History, and, most recently, the Journal of World History and History Workshop Journal.  Other scholarly works I have published include several co-edited volumes—Popular Protest and Political Culture in Modern China (Westview Press, 1992 and 1994); Human Rights and Revolutions (Rowman and Littlefield Press, 2000 and 2007); and Chinese Femininities/Chinese Masculinities (California, 2002)—and one book I edited solo, Twentieth-Century China: New Approaches (Routledge, 2003).

China’s Brave New World was by no means, however, my first effort to break out of communicating solely with other academics.  For example, I was a member of a five-person team that produced a textbook on the world in the 20th century, and I’ve served for years as one of the editors for the Oxford University Press “Pages from History” series, the goal of which is to produce high quality, document-based books for use in introductory classes. I have worked as a consultant to the talented filmmakers of the Long Bow Group, whose documentary on Tiananmen, “The Gate of Heavenly Peace,” was shown on PBS, and whose documentary on the Cultural Revolution, “Morning Sun,” won a prize from the American Historical Association.  During the last decade or so, I have routinely written commentaries and reviews for general interest magazines (such as Newsweek’s international edition, the Nation, Foreign Policy, the TLS in London, and so on), newspapers (the Los Angeles Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, the German edition of the Financial Times, etc.), and websites (Outlook India’s, for instance).  And I’ve sometimes been interviewed by and quoted by journalists, which has allowed me to get my opinions on historical issues and Chinese contemporary affairs across to readers of periodicals such as the New York Times, the Financial Times, and the Economist and the audiences who listen to shows such as “Morning Edition” on NPR.

I am still a relatively recent addition to the UCI History Department, though no newcomer to the UC system.  I came to UCI after spending fifteen years at Indiana University in Bloomington, where in addition to teaching I spent a year as the Acting Editor of the Bloomington-based American Historical Review (an experience I liked a great deal, which is one reason I sought one of my current positions—Editor of the Journal of Asian Studies) and served for three years as the Director of IU’s East Asian Studies Center.  As for previous UC ties, I received my B.A. from UC Santa Cruz (in 1982) and my doctorate from UC Berkeley (in 1989), after a brief stint on the East Coast studying at Harvard (where I got a Master’s degree in 1984).  And my previous teaching positions, in addition to IU and two years before that at the University of Kentucky, included a one-year visiting position at UC San Diego.

Professor of History

Department of History
546 Murray Krieger Hall
Irvine, CA 92697-3275

tel: 949.824.6521
fax: 949.824.2865
email: jwassers@uci.edu


Fields of Interest:

Modern China, Protest

Publications

China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance (co-edited with Kate Merkel-Hess and Kenneth L. Pomeranz). Rowman & Littlefield, forthcoming.

Global Shanghai, 1850-2010. Routledge

"Beijing Games Call to Mind Our Fair," Chicago Tribune, September 2, 2008.

"What Would Mao Think of the Games?" The Nation (web exclusive), August 22, 2008.

China's Brave New World--And Other Tales for Global Times. Indiana University Press, 2007.

"New Ways in History, 1966-2006," History Workshop Journal, 64(1), 2007, pp. 271-294.

Human Rights and Revolutions, second edition (co-edited with Greg Grandin, Lynn Hunt, and Marilyn B. Young). Rowman and Littlefield, 2007.

Chinese Femininities Chinese Masculinities (co-edited with Susan Brownell). University of California Press, 2002.

Popular Protest and Political Culture in Modern China (co-edited with Elizabeth J. Perry). Westview Press, 1992 and 1994 editions.

Student Protests in Twentieth-Century China: The View from Shanghai. Stanford University Press, 1991.