The Institute for Chinese Studies presents:
"A Century in the Furnace: Living with Heat in Wuhan 1920-2020"
Chris Courtney
University of Durham
with discussant:
John Brooke
The Ohio State University
Flyer: Forthcoming
Abstract: The heat in Wuhan is infamous. Due to the oppressive humidity experienced during the summer months, it is known as one of China’s furnace cities. High temperatures have had a profound influence on the historical development of the city, helping to define everything from local dietary and sartorial choices, to patterns of work and housing. Despite being a defining feature of local life, environmental historians have almost entirely ignored the issue of heat. This oversight is even more remarkable when we consider the extent to which the local climate dominates popular memories of life in the city. Drawing upon oral history and archival research conducted in Wuhan, this paper examines how local citizens have coped with extreme temperatures over the course of the modern era, exploring the various technological and social solutions they have adopted in order to live with heat.
Chris Courtney is an Assistant Professor in Modern Chinese History at the University of Durham. He a social and environmental historian, specialising in the history of Wuhan and its rural hinterland. His previous research focussed upon the history of nature-induced disasters in the 19th and 20th centuries. His monograph The Nature of Disaster in China examined the history of the 1931 Central China Flood. It was awarded the 2019 John K Fairbanks Prize. Chris has also published on topics including the history of environmental religion, fire disasters, and Maoist flood (mis)management. His current research focusses on the problem of heat in modern Chinese cities. This forms part of collaborative research project based at the National University of Singapore entitled Heat in Urban Asia: Past, Present and Future.
John Brooke is the director of the OSU Center for Historical Research and chair of the upcoming 2021-23 Program: Crisis, Uncertainty and History: Trajectories and Experiences of Accelerated Change. He received his B.A. from Cornell University (1975) and his M.A. (1977) and Ph.D. (1982) from the University of Pennsylvania, and between 1981 and 2001 taught at Franklin and Marshall, Amherst, and Tufts before coming to Ohio State. He was named an O.S.U. Humanities Distinguished Professor in September 2003, and served as Vice Chair of the department from 2006 to 2008. In 2007-2008 he served as the president of the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic. He was appointed Warner Woodring Chair in 2018 and an adjunct member of the Department of Anthropology in 2013.
Free and Open to the Public
If you require an accommodation, such as live captioning, to participate in this event, please contact Stephanie Metzger at metzger.235@osu.edu or 614-247-4725. Requests made at least two weeks in advance of the event will generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the university will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.
This event is supported by a U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant to The Ohio State University East Asian Studies Center.
