Brian Spivey smiling with trees and grass behind him

Biography

My name is Brian Spivey and I am currently a Mellon Faculty Fellow at UC Irvine. I obtained a B.S. in Chinese Studies from Trinity University in San Antonio, TX. I attended Georgetown University for an Asian Studies M.A. and recently completed my PhD at the History Department at UC Irvine. I have studied Chinese through ICLP at National Taiwan University(国立台湾大学 and through IES-Beijing at Beijing Foreign Studies University (北京外国语大学). Additionally, I have studied Uyghur in Ürümchi and through Wisconsin-Madison’s Central Eurasian Studies Summer Institute (CESSI).

My dissertation explores the roots of environmental protection and anti-pollution efforts in China during the early 1970s, in the waning years of Mao’s China. Through this project, my goal is to historicize the Maoist origins of environmentalist and sustainability discourse and policy in China, to integrate China’s experience into the global history of environmentalism, and to underline the historically contingent trajectories of all eco-social projects.

In addition to environmental history, I have broad thematic research interests, including ethnicity, borderlands, resource extraction, tourism, social movements, and urban history. I hold a special interest in the history of the Uyghur people and their homeland, especially during the reform decade of the 1980s.

My philosophy as an educator is based on the belief that historians have a unique way of analyzing and looking at the world and that this kind of thinking is not natural, needs to be trained, and is vital for a healthy society.

Outside the academy, I work with Jeffrey Wasserstrom as an Assistant Editor for the Pacific Rim category at the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Advisors: Dr. Emily Baum; Dr. Jeffrey Wasserstrom
Fields: East Asian Environmental History, World History, Modern China

Dissertation: Pollution Revolution: Maoist Environmentalism in the Late Cultural Revolution, 1970-1974

Awards/Grants
Fulbright Taiwan Student Research Fellow
Univ. of Cal. Humanities Research Institute Multicampus Working Group on China’s Reform Era
Association of Asian Studies
China U.S. Scholars Program (CUSP) (awarded, declined)
CIAC Research Travel Grant Award (awarded, declined)
UC Irvine Career Development for Historians Internship
Luce/ACLS Predissertation China Summer Travel Grant
UCI Department of History Winter Research Grant
UCI Department of History Summer Research Grant
Charles & Ann Quilter Graduate Students Award in History
Long Institute Graduate Student Project Grant
Georgetown Asian Studies Scholarship
Title VIII Scholarship - Central Eurasian Studies Summer Institute (Uyghur)
Taiwan Ministry of Education 12-month Huayu Scholarship

Selected Publications

Spivey, Brian. “The December 12th Student Movement: Uyghur Student Protest in Reform-Era China.” The Journal of Asian Studies, 81: 4 (November 2022): 727–746. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021911822001206

Spivey, Brian. “Review of Eisenman, Joshua, Red China's Green Revolution: Technological Innovation, Institutional Change, and Economic Development under the Commune.” H-Environment, H-Net Reviews, (January 2021). https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=55409

Spivey, Brian. “Book Review: Judd Kinzley’s Natural Resources and the New Frontier: Constructing Modern China’s Borderlands.” PRC History Review, No. 22, (August 2020): 1-4. http://prchistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Kinzley_review.pdf.

Spivey, Brian. “Cab Talk, interview with Frank Langfitt.” LARB China Channel (July 31, 2019). https://chinachannel.org/2019/07/31/langfit/