Zhang Jishun, former secretary of the party of East China Normal University, is a prominent expert in modern history of Shanghai. She is currently a research fellow of Si-mian Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities, ECNU. This lecture is a case study of micro-history and soul-history. In this lecture Prof. Zhang will demonstrate how an actress in Shanghai response to the cultural reform led by the new government in the 1950s. This is a good case to comprehend the interactions between political powers and individuals in the 1950s. 這是一項基于私人材料與官方檔案的微觀政治生態與個體心靈史研究。透過新四軍文藝兵出身的電影演員李明最初十年的從影經驗，將電影文本裏的電影人放回基層日常政治場域，考察革命新影人和舊明星應對 1950 年代都市文化改造的不同方式與生存策略。演員與党幹部的雙重角色使李明的自我身份認同遭遇挑戰，她的經驗提供了理解都市革命的另一條途徑：一個“自己人”眼中的黨、國家與領袖同舊明星的關係，“組織”對個人新職業的意義。

Socialist China was usually understood as a totalized society with strict control over the flow of information. In this talk, Dr. Wang Yu complicates the above understanding by exploring the popular practice of listening to foreign radio stations in the 1950s and 1960s China. He will bring into light this largely unknown group of radio users and answer the following questions: who were they, when, how, and why did they listen, and more importantly, how did they interact with the state as they process the information from the political power beyond state-borders? Wang suggests that the state’s failure to control the flow of information not only had to do with its technological limits but also was closely related to a […]