Author: mauracunningham
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A Project I Can Handle
2014 has been a hell of a year. I don’t mean that the year has been bad, but it has been very full. Full of planes and trains, hotel rooms, conference panels, deadlines (more often missed than met, unfortunately), packing and unpacking, writing as much as I could as fast as I could, and a…
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Bookshelf: The Secret History of Wonder Woman
“Why would a distinguished Harvard professor write about a comic book character?” Heaven forbid a distinguished Harvard professor write about something so common as a comic book character! But as I heard the distinguished Free Library of Philadelphia donor who introduced Harvard historian Jill Lepore at the library last night voice the question he had…
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Postcard from Washington, D.C.
I was in Washington, D.C. for work two weeks ago and snapped this photo of the Washington Monument while waiting in a security line. When I saw the shot appear on my phone, I suddenly remembered another photo I took of the Washington Monument, back in the summer of 1998. I spent a week in…
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Welcome to New York
“Which do you like better, the United States or China?” I grew accustomed to answering this question when I met new people while traveling in China; it came right after the inquiry into my monthly salary (and expression of horror at the figure named) and shortly before the alarm over my unmarried state past the…
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The Appendix: Thinking Outside the Archival Box
The Appendix is one of my favorite history publications. It’s a digital journal started by a group of UT Austin students several years ago, when they decided to create a venue for historians and journalists to share the quirky “extras” of their work—stories that didn’t quite fit in to a traditional academic publication but were…
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LA Review of Books: The Beautiful and Damned
I have a new post up at the LA Review of Books China Blog, about a new(ish) book of translated short stories by 1930s Shanghai author Mu Shiying. Mu was a dashing young man who frequented the city’s nightclubs and wrote dazzling works about the excesses of the age, much like F. Scott Fitzgerald did…
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What to Keep? What to Toss?
I’m now into the one-week countdown before leaving Shanghai, and it’s going to be a busy week. I’ve sorted through all my clothes and packed one suitcase, made arrangements with my (somewhat annoyed) landlady to end my lease early, and taught my class at warp speed so we’ll finish next Monday afternoon, 24 hours before…
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58 Hours in Singapore
I wanted to do something special for my birthday earlier this month, so I decided to spend the weekend in Singapore—my first trip to the city-state. Have you read the New York Times features on “36 Hours in …,” where they outline a (usually extravagant) jam-packed weekend of activities? My excursion to Singapore wasn’t quite…
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Why I’m Leaving China
Sorry, that title is probably the ultimate China expat in-joke. The backstory: almost exactly two years ago—right as I arrived in China, in fact—there was a sudden little flurry (“flurry” meaning three, by my count) of longtime expatriates returning home and penning public declarations of their reasons for doing so. The press quickly turned this…
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Dongtai Road Antique Market Update
As I wrote the other day, Shanghai’s antique market on Dongtai Road is slated for closure and demolition in the coming months, with the street’s shops scheduled to shut their doors today, October 15 (the freestanding stalls are supposed to close by the end of the year). When I visited the market on Sunday afternoon,…
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 