Sheng Mao
Ph.D. Candidate
shengmao@sas.upenn.edu
Education
BA and MA, Communication University of China (2001, 2004)
Research Interests
My research is centered around the social, cultural and political history of China from the late Qing era to the present. My interests include the history of nation-building in 20th China, the Communist Revolution, Mao’s China and the Cold War, and the history of Chinese humor.
Committee
Personal Statement
I was trained in journalism and mass communication, and worked as a radio host for several years before I came back to school — by all rights, I should be on my way to becoming a TV reporter right now. What drove me towards becoming a historian was a blacklisted history book contradicting the "official" history of Mao Zedong's rise to power. It challenged my assumptions about Communist history in China and tempted me to look for information that official historians couldn't provide. This eventually led me to the greater academic freedom and specialist training available in the US. Studying at Penn has broadened my academic interests and inspired me to look at Chinese history in a different way, although my father still wonders why I came to America to study Chinese history. Still, though, I'm enjoying all that Penn has to offer and trying hard to break through the language barrier, as well as survive culture shock! I'm also a big fan of Xiangsheng, a kind of Chinese comedy. It's good because it makes me irreverent; it's bad because it makes me really irreverent.
