Date and Time
April 7, 2010
4:45 PM - 6:00 PM

Availability
Open to the public
RSVP required by 5PM April 6

Speaker
Andrew G. Walder - Denise O'Leary and Kent Thiry Professor of Sociology and Director-Emeritus, Shorenstein APARC; FSI Senior Fellow Director-Emeritus, Shorenstein APARC; FSI Senior Fellow Shorenstein APARC at Stanford University

The Stanford China Program in cooperation with the Center for East Asian Studies will host a special series of seminars to mark 60 Years of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Over the course of the winter and spring terms, we will have six leading scholars, each examining one of the six decades of the PRC's history. Our premise is that history matters. The speaker on each decade will characterize their decade, note shifts within that time, identify the pivotal events, and discuss how the decade shaped what happened afterwards.

Andrew Walder is the Denise O'Leary and Kent Thiry Professor in the Department of Sociology at Stanford, where he is also a Senior Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). He is currently the Director of the Division of International, Comparative and Area Studies in Stanford's School of Humanities and Sciences, and in past years has served as Chair of Stanford's Department of Sociology and Director of FSI's Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.  

A political sociologist, Walder has long specialized on the sources of conflict, stability and change in communist regimes and their successor states. His current research focuses on changes in the ownership and control of large Chinese corporations and the parallel emergence of a new corporate elite with varied ties to state agencies. He also continues his research interest in Mao-era China, with a focus on the mass politics of the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1969.