Guobin Yang's Blog

A few articles I wrote in the past couple of years are coming out in several different volumes in the next few months. I will mention two in this update. First, in less than a month, Routledge will release the volume  East Asian Media Culture in the Age of Digital Platforms: Narratives, Industries, and Audiences  edited by  Dal Yong Jin and Kyong Yoon . My contribution, entitled " Narratives as Platforms ," argues that stories can serve as platforms just like social media (and we ought to turn to stories more). In October, Bristol University Press will publish the volume The Digitalisation of Memory Practices in China: Contesting the Curating State  edited by Maximilian Mayer and Frederik Schmitz . My chapter  “ How Do Netizens Remember: Digital Memory Work in the History of the Chinese Internet ” examines several forms of digital memory work, from the future-oriented curatorial practices in the 1990s and early 2000s to the backward-looking nostalgi...

1. " Two Maoisms ," published in Los Angeles Review of Books (June 7, 2025),  is my review of two new books,  Bombard the Headquarters! The Cultural Revolution in China by Linda Jaivin and How Maoism Was Made: Reconstructing China, 1949–1965 edited by Aaron William Moore and Jennifer Altehenger. Since I'm lingering on LARB, I'd like to re-up Yangyang Cheng 's wonderful review essay about my Wuhan book  " Viral Stories: On Guobin Yang’s 'The Wuhan Lockdown ,'” published on February 9, 2022. 2. 《国际新闻界》( Chinese Journal of Journalism & Communication ) published a special section on Chinese internet histories in its issue No. 4, 2025. My introduction to the special section, entitled "Ordinary Life in the Study of Internet Histories," highlights, well, the importance of studying ordinary life. 3. I can't help sharing this interesting AI generated trailer on Xiaohongshu (RedNote) created by HSS Online about my article on the contemp...

Can't believe I haven't updated this blog for almost three years! Here are a few updates about recent publications, in reverse chronological order: 1. The May 2025 issue of Foreign Literature (外国文学) just published a special section in commemoration of Professor Wang Zuoliang (王佐良), who passed away 30 years ago in 1995. I contributed an article on Professor Wang's views about how to develop a Chinese paradigm of writing foreign literary histories. My piece discusses how Prof. Wang's work speaks to contemporary academic scholarship in both the humanities and the social sciences. If you don't read Chinese, you will find that the online platform where the journal is published has instant AI translation of Chinese texts into English. It's amazing, and certainly very convenient. The multilingual platform is called HSS Online and was launched last year by Foreign Language & Teaching Press in Beijing.  2. I'm extremely pleased to have an interview about Chin...

Our fall semester started last week. What did I do this summer? Among other things, I gave a few Zoom lectures to students of journalism and communication in the cities of Jinan , Guangzhou , and Changchun . All the lectures were in Chinese except one. The one in English was entitled "All Communication Is Translation." I don't know who did it, but the lecture is now available on bilibili . If you think bilibili is a platform for commercial influencers, you will be surprised (as I am) to find many academic lectures there and even more surprised to see that the popular lectures easily get tens of thousands of views (not mine, though).

Very excited to share that The Wuhan Lockdown will be officially released on Feb 15, 2022. Please enter promo code CUP20 for 20% discount on the Columbia University Press website . I will use this space to list book talks and other information/resources related to The Wuhan Lockdown . Excerpts, Interviews, Reviews, and Commentaries January 23, 2023. " Covid's legacy: how will China remember the pandemic? " Chinese Whispers (podcast hosted by Cindy Yu of The Spectator ).   December 2022. The Wuhan Lockdown reviewed by Michael Sheringham in Asian Affairs . See: Michael Sheringham (2022) The Wuhan Lockdown , Asian Affairs , DOI: 10.1080/03068374.2022.2151278   November 2022. The Wuhan Lockdown  reviewed in Choice , Nov 2022 vol. 60, no. 3. November 2022. The Wuhan Lockdown selected as Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2022 and The Top 75 Community College Titles , November 2022 Edition. August 1, 2022, " Pandemic Diaries Under the Lens ," book review in Th...

I'm not sure if it's a good idea, but I'm going to try to pick up blogging again. Last time I posted anything here was in 2017. Things have changed a little since then. I guess part of the reason I'm switching back to good-old blogging is I'm spending less time on Twitter and even less on Facebook. I use Weibo and WeChat more, but that's in Chinese. I don't know exactly what I'll blog about. Mostly about research, reading, writing, conferencing, and such. And my next post will be a "Call for Abstracts" for a workshop on "Narratives of COVID-19" we at the Center for Digital Culture and Society  will be organizing. 

Excited to know that the paperback of my book The Red Guard Generation and Political Activism in China will be out in March, 2017. I had to come up with a very condensed version of the book description, and here it is: Guobin Yang argues that Chinese youth performed an imagined revolution from 1966 to 1968 in order to prove their revolutionary credentials and enact a hallowed political mythology. As sent-down youth in the 1970s, they rejected their revolutionary idealism and embraced self-interest and the values of ordinary life, paving the way for the cultural and political movements of the 1980s. Yang shows that contemporary memories of the Cultural Revolution are contested and often fall along the lines of political division that formed fifty years ago.   The book description on Amazon and on the web site of the press is like this: Raised to be "flowers of the nation," the first generation born after the founding of the People's Republic of China was unite...