The Recent Boom in Shanghai Studies

Since the mid-1980s there has been a great deal of scholarly interest focused on the history of modern Shanghai. In association with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, both the University of California at Berkeley and Cornell University were recipients of Luce Foundation grants that brought Shanghai scholars to North America, resulting in an outpouring of books and articles. In addition, there has been a simultaneous surge of interest among Japanese scholars and, on a smaller scale, French and German scholars. A significant slice of this new research focuses on cultural and intellectual history. This essay examines much of that new material and suggests reasons for why such a development has taken place.