Uncanny Beliefs:
Superstition in Modern Chinese History

featuring
Emily Baum
Professor of History, University of California, Irvine
and Director of the Long US-China Institute

Speaker’s summary:
In the early twentieth century, theorists around the world believed that “superstition” belonged to an era destined for irrelevance. Yet despite their confident predictions, so-called superstitions have endured. Perhaps nowhere has the history of superstition been more prolonged and tumultuous than in China. From the late nineteenth century to the present day, intellectuals and governing regimes have denigrated practices like divination, ancestor worship, and geomancy as unscientific, irrational, and unbefitting of a modern nation. Their attempts to root out such practices, however, have regularly encountered resistance from individuals who continue to find meaning in them. This talk, which is based on the speaker’s recent co-edited volume, seeks to understand what “superstition” has meant in modern China – and why acts deemed superstitious have remained so compelling to so many people, even in the face of continuous efforts to eradicate them.

Speaker’s Bio:
Emily Baum is a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, and the director of the Long US-China Institute. She is the author of The Invention of Madness: State, Society, and the Insane in Modern China (Chicago, 2018) and Needled: How Acupuncture Conquered America (Viking, 2027), and the co-editor (with Albert Wu) of Uncanny Beliefs: Superstition in Modern Chinese History (Harvard Asia Center, 2026). She sits on the board of directors for the Esherick-Ye Foundation and is a faculty advisor for the American Council of Learned Societies – Luce Foundation Program in China Studies.  

The views expressed are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect East-West Center policies or positions.

The China Seminar was founded by Dr. Daniel W.Y. Kwok in 1977. Under his guidance, it became a signature program of the Friends of the East-West Center (FEWC) in 2009. The program provides an informal venue for China experts, such as scholars, diplomats, and journalists, to present talks on aspects of China that interest the community and members of the Friends. Topics include politics, economics, social issues, history, culture, food, arts, and many other subjects.