I teach courses on Chinese history and East Asia.
Research Interests
Dr. Howard’s research has focused on different facets of China’s revolutionary experience. He is completing a book project entitled, “We Workers”: Participatory Journalism, Class and Citizenship in Wartime China that is based on hundreds of worker letters’ to the editor that were published in the Chinese Communist newspaper, New China Daily between 1938 and 1947. The testimonials aired workers’ grievances and hopes and helped form a community of class in wartime Chongqing. Contrary to scholarship that posits a fragmented working class, an apolitical urban population, and a press that was muzzled by censorship, this research redirects our attention to the urban basis of support for the Chinese Communist revolution and the role of participatory journalism in shaping a language of class.
Biography
Joshua H. Howard received a B.A. in East Asian Studies from Oberlin College in 1988 and his Ph.D. in History from the University of California at Berkeley in 1998. The following year, he joined the History Department and the Croft Institute for International Studies at the University of Mississippi, specializing in modern Chinese history. Since 2021, Dr. Howard has been teaching full time for the History Department. He offers survey courses of late imperial and modern China, and more specialized courses on contemporary China, the history of the Chinese revolutions, and US-China relations. Dr. Howard has been the recipient of several fellowships including a Fulbright (2007-08) to conduct research at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. During the 2019-20 academic year, he was selected a member of the Institute for Advance Study, School of Historical Studies. His book publications include Composing for the Revolution: Nie Er and China’s Sonic Nationalism (Hawai’i University Press, 2020) and Workers at War: Labor in China’s Arsenals, 1937-1953 (Stanford University Press, 2004). Composing for the Revolution focuses on the radical song writer Nie Er’s involvement in the proletarian arts movement of the 1930s and the political uses of his commemoration and music. Workers at War examines the process of class formation in the Nationalist wartime capital of Chongqing. In addition, Dr. Howard has published a dozen book chapters and articles on topics ranging from child labor to song movements. In addition to his scholarly endeavors, Dr. Howard has a passion for the violin and mountain hiking.
Courses Taught
- Hst 199 What is History: The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima in History and Memory
- Hst 381 Late Imperial and Modern China
- Hst 382 China in Revolution
- Hst 383 China and the U.S. since 1784
- Hst 384 Global Shanghai
- Hst 386 Capitalism and Communism in Modern China
Education
B.A. East Asian Studies, Oberlin College (1988)
M.A. History, University of California-Berkeley (1991)
Ph.D. History, University of California-Berkeley (1998)