Our first Arrighi Center seminar of the 2024 Spring semester will be on Friday, January 26 at 1:30 pm with Professor David Ownby on “Reading the China Dream in the Xi Jinping Era.” Based on ten years of reading, translating, and curating the works of contemporary Chinese intellectuals, Ownby explores how reform and opening changed intellectual life in China, creating a de facto pluralism in the early 21st century, and how intellectuals have fared under Xi Jinping, who has sought to replace pluralism with ideological discipline.

David Ownby recently retired from the History Department of the Université de Montréal and is currently a Research Associate at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany.  His most recent work focuses on intellectual life in contemporary China and he is the founder of the Reading the China Dream website.

The Arrighi Center’s general seminar is open to faculty, students (graduate and undergraduate), visiting scholars at JHU and friends from Baltimore and around the world. The meetings are in person with a zoom option for those outside Baltimore. For the zoom link and/or to be added to the Arrighi Center mailing list, please fill out this form.