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LA Review of Books: China’s Forgotten World War II
I wound up doing a sort of sequel to my China’s Forgotten WWI post for the LA Review of Books China Blog, this one looking at—no surprise here—China’s forgotten WWII. The new post is a Q&A with Oxford historian Rana Mitter, author of Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937–1945. I’ve used this book a…
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False Finishes
So, I guess I’m done? Sort of? Maybe? Almost? It turns out that there’s an unexpected amount of ambiguity about when exactly one finishes a PhD. When I got my bachelor’s and master’s degrees, the graduation ceremony was the official point of completion. That’s not the case with a doctorate—especially if, as I did, you…
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Visualising China: On Child Poverty in China
For anyone who would prefer not to read the 225-page version of my dissertation (and who can blame you?), the 500-word version is now up at the Visualising China blog. Visualising China is an online photo archive run by Professor Robert Bickers of the University of Bristol (who also wrote one of the China in…
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Twelve Years a Graduate Student? Yes, Twelve
“Oh, you’re still in school?” I don’t think any doctoral student can refrain from cringing at this question. Friends, relatives, and airplane seatmates unfamiliar with the PhD process don’t always understand how unbounded it can be: it takes as long as it takes to get through coursework, pass a set of rigorous qualifying exams, draw…
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Bookshelf: In Spite of the Gods
I have an on-again, off-again relationship with a book club here in Shanghai that’s loosely formed around some of the Johns Hopkins alumni in the city. I’ll go for a meeting or two, then skip several in a row because I’m busy or out of the country or don’t feel like reading the work of…
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Sanmao Saturday: Introducing Zhang Leping and His Sanmao the Orphan Comics
Way back when I was in my first year at UCI, I had to write a research paper and was struggling to find a topic. I knew that I wanted to do something on popular culture, but I only had about ten weeks to do all the research AND write the paper—no time to make…
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The Cronut Comes to Shanghai
I’m a little surprised at how far behind Shanghai has lagged in opening a cronut (I’m sorry, a Cronut™) shop. In New York, the birthplace of the croissant/donut hybrid, cronuts are old news: the inventor of last summer’s trendy dessert has already moved on to pushing his other creations, like an ice-cream sundae in a…
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So, What’s Next?
“How’s your dissertation going?” and “So, what’s next?” are the two questions I’ve been asked the most over the past year. Now that I’m very nearly free of the first (I spent much of today dealing with paperwork to file the dissertation so my PhD can be conferred next month), here are my many responses…
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Wanderings: Two Weeks in Taiwan
I’ll begin by admitting that I was wrong. I know a lot of people who have spent significant amounts of time in Taiwan—studying Chinese or doing archival research—and without fail, they tell me that they prefer Taiwan to mainland China. It’s cleaner, it’s better organized and better run and easier to get things done, the…
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Time for a New Look
Scroll down for photos of my new purple hair, nose piercing, and panda tattoo! Just kidding. I’m not the one with a new look—though I could probably use a haircut—this website is. I decided to take some time today and finally make a few changes I’d been planning for a while. Major aspects of this…
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Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 