ERC project Regionalizing Infrastructures in Chinese History (RegInfra) organized a reading seminar at KU Leuven LETT 06.15 on March 10, 2025, from 9:30 to 11:00 AM, in cooperation with Prof. Covell F. Meyskens. The reading seminar is relevant to his afternoon lecture on the same day, which discussed the relationship between water management and state power in China.
Registration Link (Access to the readings, discussion questions and link to the online meeting will be sent to the registered participants.)
Required Readings
- Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire : Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), pp. 36–60.
- Covell F. Meyskens, “Dreaming of a Three Gorges Dam amid the Troubles of Republican China,” Journal of Modern Chinese History 15:2 (2021): 176–94.
- Covell F. Meyskens, “‘Marvelling at a World so Changed:’ The Three Gorges Project in Mao’s China,” in How Maoism Was Made: Reconstructing China, 1949-1965, ed. Aaron W. Moore and Jennifer Altehenger (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2024), 348–80.
Optional Readings
- Karl A. Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism : A Comparative Study of Total Power. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957), Ch.2.