Kevin Landdeck

BA, Valparaiso University. MA, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. PhD, University of California-Berkeley. Recipient of a Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation dissertation grant for archival research in Chongqing (China). Research concerns 20th-century China, specifically Kuomintang war mobilization and interior society during the Sino-Japanese War (1937-45). Dissertation, “Under the Gun: Nationalist Military Service and Society in Wartime Sichuan, 1938-1945,” presently being revised for future publication, examines the state-making projects embedded within conscription and voluntary enlistment in Chiang Kai-shek's army. Translating the confessions and jottings of a captured KMT spy, who spent 16 years undergoing self-reform in a communist prison, is a side project currently in progress. Key areas of interest include China’s transition from a dynastic empire to a nation-state; the role of war in state-making; modes of political mobilization and their intersection with social organization; and private life and selfhood, including national, regional, or local and personal identities. Broadly teaches on modern (17th-century to present) East Asian history, with a focus on politics, society, and urban culture. In addition to a course on war in 20th-century Asia, a personal involvement in photography has inspired a course on photographic images and practice in China and Japan from the 19th-century through the present. Member of the American Historical Association, Association of Asian Studies, and Historical Society for Twentieth-Century China. SLC, 2011—