- "ECHOES - European Colonial Heritage Modalities in Entangled Cities" (Horizon2020)
Instytut Socjologii Uniwersytet Warszawski / Institute of Sociology University of Warsaw
ul. Karowa 18 00-927 Warszawa Poland
Laura Pozzi
University of Warsaw, Faculty of History (Wydział Historii), Faculty Member
- I am a specialist of modern Chinese history and culture, with a focus on comic strips, cinema and museums. I spent my... moreI am a specialist of modern Chinese history and culture, with a focus on comic strips, cinema and museums. I spent my undergraduate years studying Chinese language and culture at the University of Venice Ca’ Foscari, at the Beijing Foreign Studies University, and at the Sichuan Foreign Studies University.
I obtained my PhD degree in 2014 at the Department of History and Civilization in the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Italy. My dissertation, which I am now preparing for publication, analyses the production of satirical comic strips in Shanghai between the 1930s and the 1960s, and their employment in public history projects in contemporary China.
Between 2015 and 2018, I held a position of a lecturer at the Centre for China Studies, the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) in Chinese modern history, popular culture, cinema, and heritage. While in Hong Kong, also edited and curated a digital collection titled “The Cultural Revolution in Images: Caricature Posters from Guangzhou, 1966–1977,” a repository of more two hundred original political posters preserved at the CUHK University Library.
My research interest as postdoctoral fellow at ECHOES is the reframing of the historical memory and the heritage of colonialism in the Shanghai History Museum and in the other city museums of the People’s Republic of China.edit
Scholarship on museums situated in the People's Republic of China privileges the analysis of exhibitions over visitor studies. Based on the author's research on the reception of the Shanghai History Museum's representation of colonial... more
Scholarship on museums situated in the People's Republic of China privileges the analysis of exhibitions over visitor studies. Based on the author's research on the reception of the Shanghai History Museum's representation of colonial history, this paper sheds light on the opportunities and difficulties of working with museum audiences in China. The article presents a qualitative analysis of the collected data, showing how visitors personalize and criticize the state-sanctioned anticolonial and nationalist version of Shanghai's history. It argues that visitor studies are a useful method for examining how museum audiences renegotiate the meaning of exhibitions under an authoritarian regime.
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The Global East is the trans peripheral problem space where the East remains underdeveloped compared to the developed “West” in the trajectory of global modernity. The supposed solution for this problem space is to become a “West.” This... more
The Global East is the trans peripheral problem space where the East remains underdeveloped compared to the developed “West” in the trajectory of global modernity. The supposed solution for this problem space is to become a “West.” This co-figuring of underdeveloped East and developed West has regulated our historical imagination echoing Eurocentric Orientalism. Viewed from the East as a trans peripheral problem space, the divide between East and West does not equal the boundary of Asia and Europe. Neither is geographically fixed. The strategic location of each is constantly in flux in historical discourse. Each is a relational concept that takes shape and gains coherence only when
configured in relationship to the other in the discursive context of the “problem."....
space.”
configured in relationship to the other in the discursive context of the “problem."....
space.”
Research Interests:
In April 2018, the University Library of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) launched a digital collection titled "The Cultural Revolution in Images: Caricature Posters from Guangzhou, 1966–1977" that made 216 caricature... more
In April 2018, the University Library of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) launched a digital collection titled "The Cultural Revolution in Images: Caricature Posters from Guangzhou, 1966–1977" that made 216 caricature posters from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution available online for research and teaching purposes. As the curator of this digital exhibition, I had the opportunity to spend more than a year organizing, analyzing, and discussing with colleagues and students the content of these images. This photo essay aims to guide readers through the collection and present the preliminary results of my research about the production and purposes of these images. Besides providing readers with an overview of the material available in the digital collection, I will discuss how these artifacts enrich and challenge our knowledge of art during the Cultural Revolution, opening new questions about the production of art and grassroots politics in the People's R...
Research Interests:
This article investigates various heritage-related practices in the city of Shanghai since the end of colonialism. With the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the dominant approach was to remove the colonial heritage... more
This article investigates various heritage-related practices in the city of Shanghai since the end of colonialism. With the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the dominant approach was to remove the colonial heritage and replace it with a communist narrative of the people and its heroes. The introduction of market socialism in the 1990s led to a revival of the colonial heritage, but in a form that presented the city as a cosmopolitan and consumer-oriented center. The role of the colonial heritage in the dramatic change in the cityscape since the 1990s has often been viewed as nostalgic. This article analyses nostalgia as a reframing of the colonial heritage, in which it reappears as the design of communist extravagance or “conspicuous communism.” Through an analysis of the newly opened Shanghai History Museum, this article demonstrates that the global design strategy imposed on the cityscape is losing momentum and is now being challenged by a more robust narrat...
Research Interests:
This chapter analyses the humoristic features of Zhang Leping’s comic strip serial San Mao Joins the Army (SJTA) published in 1945 and of its film adaptation released in 1992. SJTA follows the adventures of the little child San Mao as a... more
This chapter analyses the humoristic features of Zhang Leping’s comic strip serial San Mao Joins the Army (SJTA) published in 1945 and of its film adaptation released in 1992. SJTA follows the adventures of the little child San Mao as a soldier during the Sino-Japanese War. The aim of this chapter is to analyse how Zhang Leping employed humor and satire in the original strips of SJTA in order to propose a nuanced and multi-layered version of the War of Resistance free from the pompous tones of wartime propaganda, while the more recent cinematographic version of the story supported the Chinese Communist Party’s artistic principle to communicate a clear and straightforward political message to the public.
Research Interests:
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has traditionally exerted a profound influence over the historical narrative presented by museums located in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Nevertheless, it has been argued that, since the market... more
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has traditionally exerted a profound influence over the historical narrative presented by museums located in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Nevertheless, it has been argued that, since the market reforms of the 1990s, provincial and municipal museums have partially managed to eschew national narratives in favour of focusing on local history. This article examines how curatorial practices used to present the local history have changed since the 1990s by analysing three permanent exhibitions organised by the Shanghai History Museum (SHM), the oldest local history museum in China. These three exhibitions, which were opened in 1994, 2001 and 2018, adopted remarkably different approaches to the representation of Shanghai’s colonial past. This article shows how the approach taken by curators has fluctuated over the last thirty years to cater to the CCP’s contemporary political needs by analysing the politics and poetics of the SHM’s three exhibitio...
Research Interests:
This paper aims to discuss the preliminary results of the research conducted within the Horizon2020 ECHOES Project by the members of work package 3 on the topic of ‘City Museums and Multiple Colonial Pasts.’ Beyond presenting preliminary... more
This paper aims to discuss the preliminary results of the research conducted within the Horizon2020 ECHOES Project by the members of work package 3 on the topic of ‘City Museums and Multiple Colonial Pasts.’ Beyond presenting preliminary results, the paper also describes the approaches of each of the researchers and analyzes some of the challenges encountered collectively while working on the three case studies at the basis of this work package. Work package 3 (WP3) focuses on how city museums around the globe represent and engage with the colonial pasts of cities which experienced colonialism or even ‘multiple colonialisms,’ one of the key concepts of the ECHOES project. Do these museum institutions act as cultural brokers able to tackle the problem of representing entangled global histories, identities, and emotions, or conversely do they support more traditional national perspectives? How do city museums in different countries collect, exhibit, study, and engage with urban coloni...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This article investigates various heritage-related practices in the city of Shanghai since the end of colonialism. With the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the dominant approach was to remove the colonial heritage... more
This article investigates various heritage-related practices in the city of Shanghai since the end of colonialism. With the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the dominant approach was to remove the colonial heritage and replace it with a communist narrative of the people and its heroes. The introduction of market socialism in the 1990s led to a revival of the colonial heritage, but in a form that presented the city as a cosmopolitan and consumer-oriented center. The role of the colonial heritage in the dramatic change in the cityscape since the 1990s has often been viewed as nostalgic. This article analyses nostalgia as a reframing of the colonial heritage, in which it reappears as the design of communist extravagance or “conspicuous communism.” Through an analysis of the newly opened Shanghai History Museum, this article demonstrates that the global design strategy imposed on the cityscape is losing momentum and is now being challenged by a more robust narrative of a city formed more by communism than colonialism. The museum clearly reveals a tension between removing and reframing colonial heritage. Colonial heritage re-emerging in a positive way is rare, but may be found in a fascination with the darker and unruly forces of colonial Shanghai, or with objects that tend to disrupt the dominant approaches of removal and reframing.
Research Interests:
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has traditionally exerted a profound influence over the historical narrative presented by museums located in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Nevertheless, it has been argued that, since the market... more
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has traditionally exerted a profound influence over the historical narrative presented by museums located in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Nevertheless, it has been argued that, since the market reforms of the 1990s, provincial and municipal museums have partially managed to eschew national narratives in favour of focusing on local history. This article examines how curatorial practices used to present the local history have changed since the 1990s by analysing three permanent exhibitions organised by the Shanghai History Museum (SHM), the oldest local history museum in China. These three exhibitions, which were opened in 1994, 2001 and 2018, adopted remarkably different approaches to the representation of Shanghai’s colonial past. This article shows how the approach taken by curators has fluctuated over the last thirty years to cater to the CCP’s contemporary political needs by analysing the politics and poetics of the SHM’s three exhibitions. Particular attention is paid to the resurgence of the national revolutionary narrative visible in the most recent exhibition.
Research Interests:
This report was developed within the Horizon2020 project ECHOES: European Colonial Heritage Modalities in Entangled Cities as part of its work package 3 on ‘City Museums and Multiple Colonial Pasts.’ This work package conducts in-depth,... more
This report was developed within the Horizon2020 project ECHOES: European Colonial Heritage Modalities in Entangled Cities as part of its work package 3 on ‘City Museums and Multiple Colonial Pasts.’ This work package conducts in-depth, qualitative, comparative analyses of three city museums – Amsterdam Museum, Museum of Warsaw, and Shanghai History Museum – each representing distinct positions within colonial history. The main aim of this report is to test the usefulness of the ECHOES modalities – reframing, repression, removal and re-emergence (Kølvraa 2019) – in the context of Chinese museums, to discuss their limitations, and to propose possible rephrasings to enhance their effectiveness. Through the analysis of the SHM/SRM’s engagement/disengagement with the city’s colonial heritage, this paper attempts to answer the following questions: can the ECHOES modalities be applied to the case of the SHM/SRM? What does it mean to engage in decolonial practices in the Chinese context? The SHM/SRM, and Chinese museums in general, are extremely critical of foreign colonialism, but are they challenging what Walter Mignolo calls the “colonial matrix of power” (Mignolo 2011) or are they just perpetuating Western views of modernity?
Research Interests:
This paper aims to discuss the preliminary results of the research conducted within the Horizon2020 ECHOES Project by the members of work package 3 on the topic of ‘City Museums and Multiple Colonial Pasts.’ Beyond presenting preliminary... more
This paper aims to discuss the preliminary results of the research conducted within the Horizon2020 ECHOES Project by the members of work package 3 on the topic of ‘City Museums and Multiple Colonial Pasts.’ Beyond presenting preliminary results, the paper also describes the approaches of each of the researchers and analyzes some of the challenges encountered collectively while working on the three case studies at the basis of this work package.
Work package 3 (WP3) focuses on how city museums around the globe represent and engage with the colonial pasts of cities which experienced colonialism or even ‘multiple colonialisms,’ one of the key concepts of the ECHOES project. Do these museum institutions act as cultural brokers able to tackle the problem of representing entangled global histories, identities, and emotions, or conversely do they support more traditional national perspectives? How do city museums in different countries collect, exhibit, study, and engage with urban colonial heritage? Our aim is to answer these questions through qualitative comparative analyses of three city museums, focusing on all aspects such as their histories, development, collections, leading narratives, political-cultural contexts, organizational policies, outreach activities, and the reception of museum products and activities by the public. The three city museums each represent distinct colonial destinies and positions within colonial history.
The research of WP3 centers on three recently reopened or refurbished city museums situated in markedly different geopolitical and epistemic zones: Western Europe (Amsterdam Museum), Central and Eastern Europe (Museum of Warsaw) and East Asia (Shanghai History Museum/Shanghai Revolution Museum: Shanghai lishi bowuguan/ Shanghai geming lishi bowuguan, 上海历史博物馆/上海革命历史博物馆). These institutions were selected for the fact that, while they share several features, they present different alternatives to the representation of colonial pasts. Although to some extent the function and practices of these museums are comparable, each case study presents specific challenges which the individual researchers must tackle.
Work package 3 (WP3) focuses on how city museums around the globe represent and engage with the colonial pasts of cities which experienced colonialism or even ‘multiple colonialisms,’ one of the key concepts of the ECHOES project. Do these museum institutions act as cultural brokers able to tackle the problem of representing entangled global histories, identities, and emotions, or conversely do they support more traditional national perspectives? How do city museums in different countries collect, exhibit, study, and engage with urban colonial heritage? Our aim is to answer these questions through qualitative comparative analyses of three city museums, focusing on all aspects such as their histories, development, collections, leading narratives, political-cultural contexts, organizational policies, outreach activities, and the reception of museum products and activities by the public. The three city museums each represent distinct colonial destinies and positions within colonial history.
The research of WP3 centers on three recently reopened or refurbished city museums situated in markedly different geopolitical and epistemic zones: Western Europe (Amsterdam Museum), Central and Eastern Europe (Museum of Warsaw) and East Asia (Shanghai History Museum/Shanghai Revolution Museum: Shanghai lishi bowuguan/ Shanghai geming lishi bowuguan, 上海历史博物馆/上海革命历史博物馆). These institutions were selected for the fact that, while they share several features, they present different alternatives to the representation of colonial pasts. Although to some extent the function and practices of these museums are comparable, each case study presents specific challenges which the individual researchers must tackle.
This report was developed within the Horizon2020 project ECHOES: European Colonial Heritage Modalities in Entangled Cities as part of its work package 3 on ‘City Museums and Multiple Colonial Pasts.’ This work package conducts in-depth,... more
This report was developed within the Horizon2020 project ECHOES: European Colonial Heritage Modalities in Entangled Cities as part of its work package 3 on ‘City Museums and Multiple Colonial Pasts.’ This work package conducts in-depth, qualitative, comparative analyses of three city museums, each representing distinct positions within colonial history. The Shanghai History Museum/Shanghai Revolution Museum (Shanghai shi lishi bowuguan/Shanghai shi lishi geming lishi bowuguan, 上海市历史博物馆 上海市革命历史博物馆) (SHM/SRM) is one of these three case studies. The aim of this report is to reconstruct the history of the museum and illustrate the current state of this institution. The permanent exhibition of the SHM/SRM, which re-opened in spring 2018, is the newest among those displayed in other city museums in the People’s Republic in China (PRC), and as such it provides us with valuable data on contemporary practices of heritage preservation and on the contemporary interpretation of colonial history in the country.
Research Interests:
On 22 November 2018, I embarked on a three-week research trip to China to start my work on the Shanghai History Museum/ Shanghai Revolution Museum and its decolonial practices. I would soon discover that the Museum is just one of the... more
On 22 November 2018, I embarked on a three-week research trip to China to start my work on the Shanghai History Museum/ Shanghai Revolution Museum and its decolonial practices. I would soon discover that the Museum is just one of the facets of the Communist Party’s plan to reframe the history of the area of the ex-Race Course. Link to Project ECHOES website http://projectechoes.eu/visiting-the-shanghai-history-museum/
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In April 2018, the University Library of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) launched a digital collection titled “The Cultural Revolution in Images: Caricature Posters from Guangzhou, 1966–1977” that made 216 caricature posters... more
In April 2018, the University Library of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) launched a digital collection titled “The Cultural Revolution in Images: Caricature Posters from Guangzhou, 1966–1977” that made 216 caricature posters from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution available online for research and teaching purposes.[1] As the curator of this digital exhibition, I had the opportunity to spend more than a year organizing, analyzing, and discussing with colleagues and students the content of these images. This photo essay aims to guide readers through the collection and present the preliminary results of my research about the production and purposes of these images. Besides providing readers with an overview of the material available in the digital collection, I will discuss how these artifacts enrich and challenge our knowledge of art during the Cultural Revolution, opening new questions about the production of art and grassroots politics in the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
Research Interests:
The collection “The Cultural Revolution in Images: Caricature-Posters from Guangzhou 1966-1977” showcases the two hundred and sixteen original posters from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Library. The aim of this digital... more
The collection “The Cultural Revolution in Images: Caricature-Posters from Guangzhou 1966-1977” showcases the two hundred and sixteen original posters from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Library. The aim of this digital collection is to make these valuable visual sources available to the academic community, and to allow scholars to employ them for research and teaching. This collection is organized into two sections: the first entitled “Caricature Posters of the Cultural Revolution in Guangzhou” showcases posters dated between 1966 and 1967; the second section entitled “The End of the Gang of Four” presents posters dated between 1976 and 1977. The posters are then divided according to their content, mostly the identity of the politician they targeted. All the available information about each image (author and date of production) are provided, together with a translation of texts and slogans contained in the posters. This collection is curated by Dr. Laura Pozzi (laurapozzi@cuhk.edu.hk; laura.pozzi@eui.eu) in collaboration with CUHK Library's Research Support and Digital Initiatives team. Special thanks to Dr. Lingjie Ji for cooperating in the translation process.
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This chapter analyzes how the city museums of Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Galle Fort deal with the memory and legacy of colonialism in the framework of the expanding economic and political power of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in... more
This chapter analyzes how the city museums of Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Galle Fort deal with the memory and legacy of colonialism in the framework of the expanding economic and political power of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in Asia. In the PRC, the historical memory of the country’s colonial past has been shaped by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In contrast to the transnational nature of the communist ideology, the CCP’s interpretation of history is strongly nationalist. China’s political expansion in the ex-British colony of Hong Kong and its economic ties to other Asian countries such as Sri Lanka open space for a discussion about its power to influence these countries’ understanding of their own history. How is the expansion of China, defined by many as a neo-colonial power, changing the way other countries in Asia understand the colonial past? Is China able to exports its own vision of colonialism and post-colonial order outside its own borders? This chapter answers these questions through an analysis of the permanent exhibitions of three city museums: The Shanghai History Museum; the Hong Kong Museum of History, and the Galle Fort Museum in Sri Lanka, part of the “One Belt, One Road” project.
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This paper analyses the humoristic features of Zhang Leping’s comic strip serial San Mao Joins the Army (SMJA) published in 1945 and of its film adaptation released in 1992. SJTA follows the adventures of the little child San Mao as a... more
This paper analyses the humoristic features of Zhang Leping’s comic strip serial San Mao Joins the Army (SMJA) published in 1945 and of its film adaptation released in 1992. SJTA follows the adventures of the little child San Mao as a soldier during the Sino-Japanese War. The aim of this paper is to analyse how Zhang Leping employed humor and satire in the original strips of SJTA in order to propose an nuanced and multi-layered version of the War of Resistance free from the pompous tones of wartime propaganda, while the more recent cinematographic version of the story supported the CCP’s artistic principle to communicate a clear and straightforward political message to the public.
Research Interests:
The aim of this paper is to introduce to the broad academic public the collection of the Cultural Revolution caricature-posters of the CUHK University Library and to demonstrate how they can be employed in the study the production of... more
The aim of this paper is to introduce to the broad academic public the collection of the Cultural Revolution caricature-posters of the CUHK University Library and to demonstrate how they can be employed in the study the production of satirical portrays of the leaders in China during the 1960s and the 1970s. The CUHK University Library possesses more than two hundred caricature-posters produced between 1966 and 1977. Originating mostly from Guangzhou, these images differ from the well-known propaganda posters of the Cultural Revolution in several ways: they are hand-drawn instead of printed; they privilege satirical tones over the solemn tones of the propaganda posters, etc The Library team and I are collaborating to create an open-access digital exhibition that will allow scholars to view, download, and employ this material for research purposes. In my paper I will explain how this collection came to be, and how these posters can be used for historical research. What are the challenges one faces in reconstructing their origins? What problems do we face in establishing their authenticity? What was the function of these posters? How were they circulated? Who created them? In what artistic context where they produced? What kind of information about the Cultural Revolution can they provide? This paper aims at contributing to the growing research on the art of the Cultural Revolution, and it explores the production of satirical images during this period of political turmoil. Furthermore, it aims at disseminating knowledge about this precious, unique and still unstudied collection
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Conference that I organised with Dr Alexandra Ortolja-Baird, King's College London
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Examples of the reinterpretation of monuments/colonial objects in museum and civic spaces.
Special thanks to the History Department of Leiden University for its support.
Special thanks to the History Department of Leiden University for its support.