Description:

SHELLEN WU: History, Tennessee University Knoxville

"The Endless Frontiers of Science in Twentieth Century China”

Description: From the 1890s until the mid-twentieth century, the world entered into a period of prolonged angst and crisis, intersected by two World Wars and countless regional and local conflicts. During this period, examples of frontier discourse around the world display the power of science and the social sciences as an international and common language of state power in the twentieth century; such discussions built upon a rising consciousness of natural resources and environmental dependency. The global circulation of imperialist and geopolitical discourse helped to shape the modern Chinese geographical imagination. Geopolitical discourse in China emerged from this fundamental spatial reconceptualization of Chinese territoriality.

Bio: Shellen X. Wu is associate professor of history at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her book, Empires of Coal: Fueling China’s Entry into the Modern World Order, 1860-1920 (Stanford University Press, 2015) is part of the Weatherhead East Asian Publication series. Empires of Coal demonstrates that by the end of the nineteenth century China and the West had converged in a crucial measure of modern, industrialized states: the theory and exploitation of natural resources, particularly fossil fuels. She is currently working on a second book on geopolitical discourse in twentieth century China.

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