Associate Professor in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto
Yiching Wu was born and grew up in Shanghai. He received his MA from Columbia University and PhD from the University of Chicago. Before joining the faculty of the University of Toronto, he was a Junior Fellow in the Michigan Society of Fellows and Assistant Professor of Anthropology and History at the University of Michigan.
Originally an anthropologist by training, his research focuses on the history, society, and politics of Mao’s China (1949-1976), in particular, the history and memory of the Cultural Revolution era (1966-1976). His main scholarly interests include historical anthropology, popular social and political movement, modern Chinese history, Chinese socialism and transition to post-socialism, and the politics of historical knowledge.
He is the author of The Cultural Revolution at the Margins: Chinese Socialism in Crisis (Harvard University Press, 2014), which won the President’s Book Award from the Social Science History Association (USA) and was also shortlisted for the Wallace K. Ferguson Book Prize (for “the outstanding scholarly book in a field of history other than Canadian history”) from the Canadian Historical Association.
Professor Wu is currently working on a monograph that investigates and reconsiders the tortuous path that led up to the Cultural Revolution and its opening crises tentatively titled “The Slippery Slope: The Coming of Mao’s Last Revolution.” He is also actively involved in work to gather and preserve Cultural Revolution and Mao-era primary sources and to develop a digital-based cooperative for preserving and sharing primary documents.
Panel 4 | Global and Planetary Implications from China Studies
The Coming of Mao’s Last Revolution: Toward a Non-teleological and Open-ended History
Abstract
My work re-examines the origins and outbreak of the Cultural Revolution by challenging the prevailing narratives that reduce the movement to elite conspiracy or the inevitable outgrowth of Maoist ideology. Instead, I trace how Mao’s “last revolution” arose from a volatile and unpredictable contest over culture, legitimacy, and the role of mass participation.
Far from a preordained or linear process, the Cultural Revolution unfolded through continual struggle, marked by improvisation, conflicting visions, and the constant renegotiation of revolutionary meaning. I contend that this period is best understood not as a single, coherent event, but as an open-ended sequence of ruptures and unintended consequences.
By foregrounding contingency and the agency of diverse actors, my research aims to reconceptualize both the logic of revolutionary transformation and the broader historiography of modern China.
