Dr Laura Pozzi

I am a specialist of modern Chinese history and culture, with a focus on comic strips, cinema and museums. I spent my undergraduate years studying Chinese language and culture at the University of Venice Ca’ Foscari, at the Beijing Foreign Studies University, and at the Sichuan Foreign Studies University.

I obtained my PhD degree in 2014 at the Department of History and Civilization in the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Italy. My dissertation, which I am now preparing for publication, analyses the production of satirical comic strips in Shanghai between the 1930s and the 1960s, and their employment in public history projects in contemporary China.

Between 2015 and 2018, I held a position of a lecturer at the Centre for China Studies, the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) in Chinese modern history, popular culture, cinema, and heritage. While in Hong Kong, also edited and curated a digital collection titled “The Cultural Revolution in Images: Caricature Posters from Guangzhou, 1966–1977,” a repository of more two hundred original political posters preserved at the CUHK University Library.

My research interest as postdoctoral fellow at ECHOES is the reframing of the historical memory and the heritage of colonialism in the Shanghai History Museum and in the other city museums of the People’s Republic of China.

Publications

“The Cultural Revolution in Images: Caricature Posters from Guangzhou, 1966–1977”, Cross Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, e-journal No. 27 (June 2018).

“Humor, War and Politics in San Mao Joins the Army: A Comparison between the Comic Strips (1945) and the Films (1992)”, in Tam King-fai and Sharon Wesoky ed. Not Just a Laughing Matter: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Political Humor in China. Springer, 2017: 39-56.

“Chinese Children Rise Up!: The Role of Children in Propaganda Cartoons During the Second Sino-Japanese War”, Cross Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, No. 13 (December 2014): 99-133.