Zhao Ma teaches courses on 20th-century Chinese history, city and women, crime and punishment, material culture, historical landscape, socialist culture, and the history of US-China relations. His current book project examines rumor-mongering in Beijing during the Korean War period.
Ma received his Ph.D. in history from Johns Hopkins University in 2007, and joined the department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Washington University in 2011. His first book, “Runaway Wives, Urban Crimes, and Survival Strategies in Wartime Beijing, 1937-1949,” uses criminal case files to explore lower-class women’s role in remaking wartime Beijing’s social and moral order. He is currently writing a new book, “Seditious Voices in Revolutionary China, 1950-1953.” It examines the relationship between rumor-mongering and political propaganda during China’s Korean War campaign, and offers a lens through which to study the transformation of urban informational space against the backdrop of war fever and emerging revolutionary politics in Mao’s China. At Washington University, Ma teaches courses on 20th-century Chinese history, historical landscape, socialist culture, and US-China relations.
In addition to his research and teaching, Ma has been a Public Intellectual Program (PIP) Fellow at the National Committee on US-China Relations since 2014. As a PIP fellow, he has opportunities to participate in meetings with government officials of the United States and China and has joined the U.S. congressional delegation to visit China. He also works closely with public media on topics of Chinese politics, society, and US-China relations.
