Miriam Gross

Professor Gross is jointly appointed with the School of International and Area Studies. She received her Master’s in International Affairs from Columbia University and her Ph.D. in Modern Chinese History from the University of California, San Diego. Professor Gross is writing a book on the recent history of public health in China that examines public health campaigns during the Maoist era (1949-1976). Using China’s famous model schistosomiasis campaign as a case study, she examines how local people resisted arcane new Western visions of medicine fostered by an intrusive state. She also explores how the Party deployed scientific and medical aspects of the campaign to justify the selective disruption and reconstitution of local patterns of social life to consolidate political power at the grassroots level. In addition to an interest in the history of public health and the popularization of science, Professor Gross is also working on a project on marketing tourism and building a service culture during Twentieth Century China. Her classes include surveys on Late Imperial China, Modern China, and East Asia since 1600 and specific topics classes including Environmental and Disease Crises in China and Rural Life in Modern China.