Directory of Research and Expertise

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Research Summary and Profile

Research interests:

History

Summary of research interests and expertise:

Mark Czellér is a historian of twentieth-century China, with a focus on the Mao era. His research explores the Chinese Communist Party’s categorization of a substantial minority of the Chinese population as 'class enemies' between land reform (1946-52) and the late 1970s.

Mark’s doctoral thesis, which he is currently revising for publication as a monograph, is titled 'Non-People in the People’s Republic: “Landlords” and “Rich Peasants” under Maoist State Socialism.' Based on a combination of bureaucratic documents, propaganda material, and memoirs, it is a political, cultural, and social history of the largest group of people deemed 'class enemies' by the Maoist state. An article deriving from this project, which explores the predicament of those whose families were classified as ‘landlords’ or ‘rich peasants’ from the perspective of the history of emotions, has recently appeared in Modern China.

Mark has also begun developing his next project, an intellectual history of perspectives on the Chinese Communist Party’s land reform campaigns. These campaigns probably constituted the largest redistribution of economic, political, and social capital in human history, and as such have been the subject of much debate and polemic. This project will trace how these debates have developed over the past century—from the emergence of the “land question” in the 1920s, through the Cold War, and into the present. 

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