A Special Colleague

Abstract

This article discusses the scholarly collaboration between Yingjin Zhang and his University of California, San Diego colleague, Paul Pickowicz. It deals specifically with the history of their four coeditd book projects: From Underground to Independent: Alternative Film Culture in Contemporary China (2006), Liangyou: Kaleidoscopic Modernity and the Shanghai Global Metropolis, 1926–1945 (2013), Filming the Everyday: Independent Documentaries in Twenty-First-Century China (2017), and Locating Taiwan Cinema in the Twenty-First Century (2020). The focus is on their organizational strategy. How did they come up with new research topics, bring diverse scholars together for formal conferences, and move to book publications in a timely way?

Notes

1 Paul Pickowicz and Yingjin Zhang, eds., From Underground to Independent: Alternative Film Culture in Contemporary China (New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2006), x.

2 Paul Pickowicz, Kuiyi Shen, and Yingjin Zhang, eds., Liangyou: Kaleidoscopic Modernity and the Shanghai Global Metropolis, 1926–1945 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 1.

3 Paul Pickowicz and Yingjin Zhang, eds., Filming the Everyday: Independent Documentaries in Twenty-First-Century China (New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2017), 17.

4 Paul Pickowicz and Yingjin Zhang, eds., Locating Taiwan Cinema in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Cambria, 2020), 16.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paul G. Pickowicz

Paul G. Pickowicz is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, San Diego. Books he has authored, co-authored, and co-edited include Marxist Literary Thought in China (1981), Unofficial China (1989), Chinese Village, Socialist State (1992, winner of the Levenson Prize of the Association for Asian Studies), New Chinese Cinemas (1994), Popular China (2002), Revolution, Resistance, and Reform in Village China (2005), From Underground to Independent (2006), The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History (2006), Dilemmas of Victory (2007), China on the Margins (2010), Radicalism, Revolution, and Reform in Modern China (2011), China on Film (2012), Restless China (2013), Liangyou: Kaleidoscopic Modernity and the Shanghai Global Metropolis (2013), Filming the Everyday (2017), China Tripping (2019), A Sensational Encounter with High Socialist China (2019), and Locating Taiwan Cinema in the Twenty-First Century (2020). He is associate producer of the documentary films China in Revolution, 1911–1949 (1989) and The Mao Years, 1949–1976 (1994). Pickowicz was honored by the German government in 2016 with a Humboldt Research Award for lifetime accomplishments in research and teaching.