Evolved in the 60s (1966-1976), the Cultural Revolution opened a mysterious and deep chapter not merely in modern Chinese history, but also in World history. Cultural Revolution's core is violent. This phenomenon hit deeply into china's political and economic system, society's order, and cultural tradition. Millions of people had been sacrificed in this huge and irrational ritual. Yet, the illusive impression towards this Cultural Revolution doesn't result from people's scattered or mixed up memories, but from the way China dealt with it. For forty years, the collective memory of the Cultural Revolution has been fading. However, massive trauma still remains. Memories of this Cultural Revolution provides not only the research of Cultural Revolution but also gives a way to peep through via its special narrative mode and depth, avoiding political testifying. Whether those writers use "Transcendental skill" (like Jung Chang, Xu You Yu), " Reproductive method" (like Ji shian Lin, Yang Jiang), or the "Hemi-Transcendental skill" (like Pa Kin, Yang Xiao Kai) that involves above mentioned techniques, they all faithfully show us their personal philosophical thinking of that special time. Using four dimensions as reference: social status in the Cultural Revolution, writer's nationality, writer's identity (official scholar/ free writer), and area of publication, this thesis will show how the prevalent western social science value affects those people who have experienced this Cultural Revolution. Finally, this thesis shows how one's identity can be regarded as a writing strategy. History can be a mentor to the future. For truely healing the trauma, we shouldn't forget such important experience. By their retrospection, people who lived during that period lead readers into that special irrational, rush, unprecendented period.

As a political disturbance and social movement, the Cultural Revolution hugely impacted the development of Chinese piano art. The piano went through many stages throughout this ten-year period. This dissertation examines the suppression and later expansion of piano music in China during the Cultural Revolution, along with the historical motivations and forces that shaped each stage of its development. The study is supported by historical documents and relevant literature. This dissertation includes an analysis of the roles that piano music played during this era and the piano's relationship with the Cultural Revolution's modernizing goals. The analysis focuses on the musical characteristics of three piano pieces from this period and explores the instrument's historical importance, to better understand how Chinese piano music maintained a careful balance between its value as a tool for socio-political propaganda and its transformation under the burden of political pressure and creative limitations. Additionally, this dissertation examines playing techniques in these works that define a distinctly Chinese piano style that is enormously popular today. To complement the dissertation, these piano pieces were performed during the dissertation recital.

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Based on the theory of pedagogic discourse developed by Bernstein, this thesis proposes a framework to analyse the relationship between the production of intellectual discourse and the Chinese State. The framework is developed on the basis of the theory of the pedagogic device developed by Bernstein and a comparison of the theoretical approaches adopted by Bernstein, Bourdieu and Foucault. The thesis then identifies three different dominant ideological positions in China between 1949 and 1993. They are, namely, traditional collectivism (before the Cultural Revolution), radical collectivism (during the Cultural Revolution) and regulated individualism (after the Cultural Revolution). The empirical work is a study of the most important education journal, jiaoyu Yanjiu (Educational Research) published by the Central Institute of Educational Research. The journal was created in 1978 by the Institute to support the new education reform initiated as part of the Post Cultural Revolution reform in China. Two major empirical studies are conducted. The first analysis is on the editorials published by the journal. The second analysis is on the papers published by the journal on moral education. Essentially, the paper argues that the reform policy in China introduced by the Chinese Government in 1978 had necessitated a fundamental shift in what constituted the core elements of the dominant ideological positions of the State. This involves certain elements of autonomy introduced to the intellectual field. But the exercise of the newly granted freedom is conditional. This fundamental shift led to a shift in the modality of controlling the intellectual field exercised by the State and has an effect upon the ways in which educational theories are produced and reported in the journal.

Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses. / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-02

 This narrative study examines the consequence of the Cultural Revolution experience for the 1966-1976 primary school students, who are labeled as Little Red Guards. They retrospectively identify both gains and losses from their schooling experience during the Cultural Revolution, which contrasts with the traditional victim image of the Red Guard generation. This study focuses on the coexistence of their positive and negative voices, specifically asking how are the positive and negative voices formed in the narratives of the former Little Red Guards, and what are the perceived gains and losses over time. The field work was conducted in Beijing in 2009 and 2010. Data was collected through oral histories and analyzed relying on the method of personal narrative analysis. Forty-nine informants participated, and twenty-six cases were selected as major data sources. Given the range in participants’ ages, selected cases are classified into three groups: 1966 senior primary school students (Group-A), 1966 junior primary school students (Group-B), and students who enrolled in primary school in the 1970s (Group-C). Furthermore, due to their subjective voices, the narratives are also divided into four sub-categories: positive, negative, neither (neither-positive-nor-negative) and both (both-positive-and-negative) voices. The oral data is presented with impressive moments, events, and episodes (at the factual level), and their reflections and self-generalizations (at the interpretative level). Data analysis suggests that the positive and/or negative voices are closely linked with students’ past position in school, which involved three roles: activists, students with a bad label, and ordinary participants. The activists basically hold positive points due to their student leader experiences as well as the beneficial social practices they engaged in. The labeled students tend to put forward totally negative accounts because of excluded experiences, characterized by alienation, discriminations, and frustrations. The ordinary participants, on one hand, assign negative comments to the meaningless social practices they participated; on the other hand, also highlight untended positive consequences for their later life. The findings reveal two determining themes within the diverse narratives: involvements in the political activities and participation in social practice. The two themes indicate two significantly hidden tissues: ideological awareness (IA) and practical awareness (PA).Working as the internalized predisposition, IA and PA expose the embodied history of the former Little Red Guards and a historically embedded process of their self-construction. Concerning the revolutionary context of the 1966-1976 education reform, this study combines and integrates IA and PA as constituting a revolutionary habitus (RH).The positive accounts relating to IA and PA display an elaborative meaning of RH; whereas the negative narratives concerning IA and PA demonstrate the restrictive meaning of RH. Therefore, the potential gains lie in the attainment of strong confident leadership and pragmatic social practice; while the losses refer to the formation of a pervasive sensitivity to political issues and a destructive recognition of the practical-oriented education. The finding of RH also stimulates more reflective thinking about the legacy of the 1966-1976 radical education reform, from the perspective of former Little Red Guards. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of China (the Cultural Revolution)from 1966 to 1976 is considered an unprecedented political and social upheaval in Chinese modern history. Model Plays were produced as the core of the Cultural Revolutionary propaganda in an effort to promote a new discourse of political and cultural ideology of and for the worker-farmer-soldier class. As images of heroic proletarian revolutionary women were expansively represented onstage, conventional gender norms and boundaries were challenged. This paper assesses the "woman" messages carried by Model Plays and the vision of Chinese women's liberation they depicted on the Cultural Revolutionary theatric stage. By analyzing images of Model woman characters in Model Plays, the author argues that these model plays and operas offer an idealized vision of Chinese women's emancipation and to certain extent serve as an empowering influence on women's social practice in real life during the Cultural Revolution; on the other hand, however, they reveal a central tension in the Chinese revolutionary discourse with respect to gender: women could be re-conceived as heroes, public actors fighting fearlessly for collective goals, yet these women heroes seemly could only take form in the absence of private ties: family bonds, marriage, and motherhood. So while there is something "new" and, perhaps, even liberating in these newly imagined women characters, the form they take falls short of truly reconfiguring gender relations in Chinese society.

Wang Xiaobo is a Post-Mao novelist whose works have prompted tremendous attention from the intellectuals and the public after his death. The straightforward representation of sex in his fiction is often considered as one of the sources that contribute to his “liberal spirit”. This is because many of Wang Xiaobo’s stories full of sexual depictions are set during the Cultural Revolution. But Wang Xiaobo’s ambiguous manipulation of the relationship between sex and the power makes his resistance to authoritarianism a tricky issue. On the one hand, his nonchalant attitude to both sex and politics can be interpreted as a mocking of the Maoist ideology. On the other hand, the author’s detachment from the political background and the protagonist’s sexual carnival in the rural areas can be considered as indifferent to the Cultural Revolution. The engagement with Maoist ideology in the theoretical framework of suppression/revolt cannot give a satisfactory answer to the role of sex in his fiction. This thesis amends this framework by taking other elements than Maoist discourse into consideration. / Graduate

This paper will explore the intersections of gender, sexuality and revolution in contemporary Chinese art through the lens of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. As an integral part in the process of narrative reconstruction, the propaganda imagery from the Cultural Revolution provides important insights into societal expectations for the masses. This paper will also analyze how contemporary artists seek to appropriate and respond to the events of the Cultural Revolution through their artwork, and describe the processes by which the I interpreted this information in order to create my own artwork.

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of China (the Cultural Revolution)from 1966 to 1976 is considered an unprecedented political and social upheaval in Chinese modern history. Model Plays were produced as the core of the Cultural Revolutionary propaganda in an effort to promote a new discourse of political and cultural ideology of and for the worker-farmer-soldier class. As images of heroic proletarian revolutionary women were expansively represented onstage, conventional gender norms and boundaries were challenged. This paper assesses the "woman" messages carried by Model Plays and the vision of Chinese women's liberation they depicted on the Cultural Revolutionary theatric stage. By analyzing images of Model woman characters in Model Plays, the author argues that these model plays and operas offer an idealized vision of Chinese women's emancipation and to certain extent serve as an empowering influence on women's social practice in real life during the Cultural Revolution; on the other hand, however, they reveal a central tension in the Chinese revolutionary discourse with respect to gender: women could be re-conceived as heroes, public actors fighting fearlessly for collective goals, yet these women heroes seemly could only take form in the absence of private ties: family bonds, marriage, and motherhood. So while there is something "new" and, perhaps, even liberating in these newly imagined women characters, the form they take falls short of truly reconfiguring gender relations in Chinese society.