Since I demanded all of you do a self-introduction, I thought it was only fair that I do my own – even though I babbled at you plenty at our introductory course meeting.

I am a modern Chinese cultural historian: my primary work currently is on cultural reform and censorship in the People’s Republic of China between 1949 and 1966. I look at a wonderful, amazing literary genre called chuanqi, “miraculous tales” (which means everything from ghosts to gods to fox spirits), particularly ghost opera. I write a lot about my research on my personal blog (and elsewhere), and am always happy to talk ghosts, superstition, and issues related to censorship. My next big research project is going to consider the history of high altitude mountaineering in China – it’s one I’m very excited to get underway, especially considering the awesome scholars of the environment and science we have here at MSU. It’s the reason I’m teaching this seminar!

Reading Mao’s Little Red Book @ 6800 m on Everest.

I am very excited about this class, and I am excited to have all of you for a semester & see how things develop. I look forward to a fun, productive semester talking about cool stuff and writing good things about our own particular interests vis-à-vis mountains.

I can be found on Twitter or at my website’s blog, The Wayward Historian (my current claim to fame is having posted a 1980s Chinese comic book version of Star Wars that went viral back in 2014 & keeps popping up: probably the first and last time I’ll be on the BBC & Rolling Stone websites, among many others). I also have the world’s cutest pit bull, who is an excellent hiking companion and handles elevation gain way better than I do!