Author Archives: Jeffrey Wasserstrom

About Jeffrey Wasserstrom

is Chancellor’s Professor of History at UC Irvine and editor of the Journal of Asian Studies. He lived in Shanghai for a year in the 1980s and has written two books focusing on the city: Student Protests in Twentieth-Century China: The View from Shanghai (Stanford, 1991) and Global Shanghai, 1850-2010 (Routledge, 2009). His most recent book is China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know (2nd ed., Oxford, 2013). In addition to his academic publications, he regularly contributes commentaries and reviews to newspapers, magazines, blogs, and journals of opinion.

Shanghai as a City of Juxtapositions

December 16, 2014 by
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According to a variety of texts—from guidebooks and travel accounts to, at least by inference, novels and later films—what made a trip to Shanghai in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries special was the way one encountered there a jumble of people from, and physical elements linked to, various parts of the world. It was, as boosters and travelers both liked to stress, a place of great cultural diversity, where the East and West were juxtaposed in special ways. This sense of the city Continue reading → Continue reading →

Interview with Greg Girard

December 16, 2014 by and
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Jeffrey Wasserstrom: How do you see your Phantom Shanghai fitting in with—or perhaps challenging—the sketch I’ve offered in this issue of the city moving from one defined more by juxtapositions of cultures to one in which juxtapositions of eras is as important?1 I’ve left some important things out, of course, such as juxtapositions of classes, something that is related to both of the other sorts of juxtaposition. Greg Girard: Shanghai’s past as a city run by Westerners continues to fascinate Westerners and others, and there Continue reading → Continue reading →