Whether
it’s the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China’s
growing appetite for natural resources or the
ballooning U.S. trade deficit, China is on our radar screens. In
May, a UCSD conference was held to honor two professors who have
paved the way in Chinese Studies. Professors Joseph W. Esherick and
Paul G. Pickowicz launched the history program over 18 years ago
and since then have mentored 17 Ph.D.s, with 13 more currently working
toward their doctorate.
 Twenty-one former and present graduate students returned for the
conference titled, “Visualizing the Chinese Past: Memory, Image,
and History in China, 1700-Present.” Their papers, to be published
in book form in 2008, focused on the importance of visual evidence
and material in historical research, a methodology favored by Pickowicz
and Esherick. The scholars intend the book
to be used in undergraduate Chinese history courses.
“All of us came up with a theme and idea and then came together to
write a serious volume about the
nature and role of visuality in thinking about history, something
that Professors Pickowicz and Esherick emphasize in their teaching,” says
James Cook, ’98, one
of the planners.
Pickowicz, an expert in rural China and Chinese film, most recently
co-wrote Revolution, Resistance, and Reform in Village China with
Mark Selden and Edward Friedman (Yale University Press, 2005).
He came to UCSD in 1973 and was joined by Esherick, now the
Hwei-chih
and Julia Hsiu Endowed Chair of Chinese Studies, in 1990. Together,
Pickowicz and Esherick, a specialist in revolution, family and
national transition in China, have built a graduate program
that US News and
World Report ranked among the top 10 in the nation for the last
two years.
UCSD has five Chinese historians, but only Esherick and Pickowicz
study the modern era, from 1800 onward. The modern Chinese history
program includes a mix of both Americans and students from China. “Some people ask why Chinese students come here, and the answer is
because the intellectual climate is much more open,” says Pickowicz. “They
bring their expertise back to China and have had an impact on Chinese
academics. It’s a two-way street and a fantastic relationship.
China is changing, it’s more open, and these students are pushing
the envelope.” 
— Evelyn Hsieh, ’05
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