This illustrated talk will focus on the meaning of China’s first Olympics and first World’s Fair as spectacles and effort to “rebrand” the PRC as a thoroughly modern country with state-of-the-art urban centers. To place them in perspective, the presenter will look backwards to the mega-events held in the United States and Japan when they were rising rapidly in the global economic hierarchy and across the Himalayas to India, where the Commonwealth Games are taking place this year in Delhi. The presenter will draw on his personal experiences touring the Shanghai Expo, which he stopped in at three times over the summer, and spending time in Delhi, which he will visit for the first time this October, right after the Commonwealth Games have ended.

Speaker Bio: Jeffrey Wasserstrom is a Professor of History and Chair of the Department at the University of California, Irvine, and the Editor of the Journal of Asian Studies. His commentaries and reviews have appeared in a wide variety of newspapers, magazines and blogs, including Outlook India, the Nation, New Left Review, the World Policy Journal, the Asian edition of the Wall Street Journal, and both Time and Newsweek. His latest book, published earlier this year by Oxford University Press, is China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know.