Since 2014, the ongoing California State University San Bernardino Modern China Lecture Series has featured lectures, roundtable discussions, film screenings, and other events about China. Guests have included journalists, academics, and other experts with a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary spectrum of expertise. These events have always been free and open to the public, made possible by CSUSB for the campus and the wider community. The series provides access to world-class scholarship and expertise on China-related topics in history, literature, visual art, sociology, economics, music, political science, museum studies, anthropology, film, and more. The events hopefully will continue to enrich our understanding of China today.
The series has been supported by the CSUSB History Club and Phi Alpha Theta Honors Society, the History Department, Pfau Library, the Intellectual Life Fund, and the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences; some of the lectures and events have also been supported by the SBS Senior Scholar Fellowship Research Fund, the Jack H. Brown College of Business and Public Administration, the College of Extended and Global Education, the College of Arts and Letters, the Santos Manuel Student Center, the Faculty Center for Excellence, the Office of Strategic Communication, Academic Technologies and Innovation, and the University Diversity Committee. Special thanks to Pamela Crosson, Administrative Support Coordinator for the CSUSB History Department, whose expertise and tireless support have been essential to the success of every event in the series. Some lectures have not been recorded and published here due to controversial content, rights issues, or scheduling conflicts.
Coordinators
Jeremy Murray teaches and writes about modern China, and has published work on Hainan island, Asian cultural traditions, and pop culture. He coordinates the CSUSB Modern China Lecture Series and helps coordinate the CSUSB Conversations on Race and Policing. He is faculty co-advisor for the award-winning CSUSB student-run history journal, History in the Making. His books include China's Lonely Revolution: The Local Communist Movement of Hainan Island, 1926-1956 (SUNY, 2017), Asian Cultural Traditions (with Carolyn Brown Heinz, Waveland, 2019), and China Tripping: Encountering the Everyday in the People's Republic (edited with Perry Link and Paul Pickowicz, Rowman & Littlefield, 2019).
Alexander Serrano is a graduate of the Master of Arts in History program at CSUSB ('22) and is currently a doctoral student in the UC Santa Barbara Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies. His MA thesis project was on modern China with an emphasis on the Manchu queue hairstyle as a political and cultural symbol during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), and its significance in the early days of the Republican period. The Manchu rulers of the Qing mandated this hairstyle of a long, braided queue and shaven forelock on all men, making the body a contentious site in the nationalist anti-Manchu and Ming loyalist movements, and in post-Qing efforts to establish a Chinese ethno-state. Serrano has also served as a section editor and author on the staff of the student-run history journal at CSUSB, History in the Making, which won first prize two years in a row in the Gerald D. Nash Journal competition administered by the national office of the Phi Alpha Theta history honors society.
Please send any questions related to the series to jmurray@csusb.edu.