Jennifer Liu received her B.A. from UCLA (2002), and her M.A. (2007) and Ph.D. (2010) from the University of California, Irvine. She joined the faculty at Central Michigan University in 2009.

Office: Powers 238
Phone: (989) 774–7769
Email: liu3j@cmich.edu

Research and Teaching Interests

Professor Liu specializes in the political and social history of twentieth-century China, particularly education, youth culture, student protest, and ethnic identity. Her current project, Indoctrinating the Youth, examines the Nationalist (Guomingdang) government’s attempts to inculcate political loyalty through youth groups, compulsory military training, and secondary school curriculum from 1930–1960. She explores how the government helped middle schools relocate to the interior from northern and coastal China after Japan’s 1937 invasion, analyzing continuities and changes in education during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), the Chinese Civil War (1945–1949), and in 1950s Taiwan. Her sources range from government archives to conducting oral interviews with refugees who fled from China to Taiwan in 1949.

Recent Publications

“Anticipating Invasion: Military Training in Taiwan’s High Schools, 1953–1960,” Twentieth-Century China 37.3 (2012), 204–228.

Contributor. “China,” Worldmark Encyclopedia of the Nations, 13th ed. (Gale Cengage, 2012).

Review of Robert Culp, Articulating Citizenship: Civic Training and Student Politics in Southeastern China, 1912–1940 (Cambridge, Mass., 2007), in China Review International 18, No. 2 (2011).

Review of Andrew Morris, Colonial Project, National Game: A History of Baseball in Taiwan, (University of California Press, 2010), in Journal of Global History 7.2 (July 2012).​​​​