Dr. Lu explores how urban waste recyclers in Communist China have turned the flea market into a counter-archive of historical knowledge by salvaging the official records that local bureaucrats have sold as used paper. From underground publishing to private museums, their cultural entrepreneurship has created a transnational community of scholar-collectors and unsettled the meaning of "archive." A reception will follow his talk.
Dr. Lu joined the Dartmouth faculty in 2023 and after having been a British Academy Newton International Fellow at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies. He is currently completing his first book project, The Dustbin of History in Modern China.
Sponsored by the McClellan Lecture Series and the History Department
