Damian Mandzunowski

PhD Candidate

I am a student of modern Chinese history. In my dissertation, I focus on officially-organized practices of collective reading at factories organized in the transitional years between the Mao (1949-1976) and early reform eras (1976-1992) in the People’s Republic of China. Placed at the crossroads of contemporary political history, critical social research and communication/propaganda studies, the project aims to advance our understanding of how the party in power employed collective reading within the larger drive to make state socialism work, and how such activities were also advancing ideological notions deemed crucial at various periods of socialist modernization. Basing my research on archival, quais-archival, visual, and written sources, the project is a close investigation into collective reading practices, the contents studied and the policies behind them.

You can connect with me on X @zhong_daming, or follow my publication updates on ResearchGate. I also curate an ongoing online repository of photographs of people reading in China, you can see it here. My other research interests include Chinese film, visual narratives (especially caricatures and comics) and contemporary art.