Sinologia: History and Memory in Contemporary China

SupChina’s Sinologia Conference is an online workshop that seeks to bridge the gap between journalism and academia by connecting the SupChina community with the newest generation of China-focused graduate students in Political Science and Applied History. Sinologia represents a practical exchange. Presenters are given the opportunity to pitch their ideas to a diverse audience of practitioners, while attendees get to engage with highly-polished, multi-disciplinary work that draws from the latest cutting-edge methodological innovations from the academy.

This year’s theme is History and Memory in Contemporary China; our presentations will focus specifically on how perceptions of China’s past shape the policies of its future. 

This Year’s Presentations

Emma Shleifer — (Never) Again? National Memory Narratives in Xi and Netanyahu’s Foreign Policies

Emma Shleifer is a Johns Hopkins SAIS graduate in international political economy and economics. Her research focuses on how states and private actors use education to serve policy goals. A Yenching scholar at Peking University and War Studies graduate from King’s College, London, her work has appeared in The Diplomat, Strife Journal, and the SAIS China Studies Review. She will present on how state-constructed national memory narratives serve specific foreign policy goals.

Donald Santacaterina — The Mass Line: The Role of Correspondent Journalism in Building a Socialist China (1949-1956)

Donald Santacaterina is a Ph.D Candidate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill whose work focuses on newspaper culture in China under high socialism (1949-1976). His dissertation examines “print socialism,” or the process of forming intimate, imagined communities across China through local newspapers that have long been overlooked as obedient, monolithic mouthpieces subsumed under the control of an all-powerful People’s Daily. He has published on topics of “newspaper reading groups” (读报组) in socialist China, advertisements for goods and services across newspapers under high socialism, and the role of foreign radio propaganda (such as the BBC and Voice of America) in shaping domestic Chinese understandings of the news. He will present on amateur newspaper “correspondents” (通讯员) and their role in shaping public conceptions of Chinese socialist newspapers as democratic forums open to the active participation of “the masses.”

Tabitha Speelman — Immigration Attitudes and National Identity in Mainland China 

Tabitha Speelman is a PhD candidate studying China’s immigration reform at Leiden University. She previously worked as a China-based correspondent for Dutch daily newspaper Trouw. Her research interests include Chinese state and societal perspectives on international migration, China’s media landscape, and China-EU relations. Her work has appeared in publications including China Perspectives, China Information, Foreign Policy and The Initium.

Jason Zhou — Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of US-China Relations: Views of a Rising Generation

Jason Zhou is a current Schwarzman Scholar at Tsinghua University whose research focus includes US-China relations and the role of emerging technology in great power relations. Jason previously provided analysis and briefings to US policymakers on the ISIS insurgency and the Syrian Civil War while working at the Institute for the Study of War. Jason graduated from the University of Chicago with a Bachelor’s degree in Public Policy Studies and is professionally fluent in Mandarin Chinese.

Oliver Dieckmann — The Reception of Stalin’s Short Course Among the CCP Leadership during the Yan’an Period 

Oliver Dieckmann is a graduate student of Modern China Studies at Freiburg, Germany. Currently, he is an exchange student in the Russian city of Tver. There he is preparing his master’s thesis on the pro-Soviet CCP-leader and inner-party opponent of Mao Zedong, Wang Ming.