Sentimental Republic: Chinese Intellectuals and the Maoist Past
- MEAL 1
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Modern East Asian Literature Research Cluster presents
Emerging Research on Modern East Asian Literature
Book Talk
Sentimental Republic: Chinese Intellectuals and the Maoist Past
Speaker: Hang Tu
Assistant Professor of Chinese Studies | National University of Singapore
Moderator: Pei-yin Lin
Associate Professor | School of Chinese | The University of Hong Kong
DATE: 25 FEB 2026 (WED) 4:00–5:30 pm (HKT)
VENUE: ON ZOOM
How does emotion shape the landscape of public intellectual debate? Sentimental Republic proposes emotion as a new critical framework for understanding post-Mao cultural controversy. Challenging the assumption that market reform marked a break from revolutionary affect, the book shows how the post-1978 era witnessed emotionally charged debates over Maoist legacies—from anguished condemnations of revolutionary violence to elegiac remembrances of socialist egalitarianism. Tracing four decades (1978–2018) of cultural conflict, it examines how liberals, the left, cultural conservatives, and nationalists debated Mao’s revolutionary legacies in light of the postsocialist transition. By analyzing how rival intellectual camps stirred up melancholy, guilt, anger, and resentment, Tu argues that the polemics surrounding the country’s past cannot be properly understood without reading the emotional trajectories of the post-Mao intelligentsia.
Hang Tu is Assistant Professor of Chinese Studies at the National University of Singapore and Deputy Director of the CCKF–NUS Southeast Asia Center for Chinese Studies. A scholar of Chinese literature and thought, his research focuses on the cultural politics of emotion in modern and contemporary China. His work has appeared in Critical Inquiry, The Journal of Asian Studies, Modern Intellectual History, MCLC, and Prism. His monograph Sentimental Republic: Chinese Intellectuals and the Maoist Past was published by Harvard University Press in January 2025.
The series is coordinated by Prof. Su Yun Kim (suyunkim@hku.hk), Prof. Pei-yin Lin (pylin@hku.hk), and Prof. Alvin Wong (akhwong@hku.hk), and is supported by the School of Chinese, School of Humanities, and School of Modern Languages and Cultures. For further details, visit www.meal.hku.hk.
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