Covell Meyskens, Ph.D. - Department of National Security Affairs
Associate Professor, Academic Associate for Curricula 682 and 688
Expertise: China, East Asia, Modern World History
Dr. Covell Meyskens is a historian of modern China interested in security, development, and great power competition in East Asia and the Indo-Pacific. His first book, , was published by Cambridge University Press. It examines how the Chinese Communist Party industrialized inland regions in order to protect socialist China from American and Soviet threats, merging Cold War geopolitics with the everyday lives of millions. His second book project is titled The Three Gorges Dam: Building a Hydraulic Engine for China. Through studying Chinese efforts to construct the Three Gorges Dam over the course of the twentieth century, his second book seeks to explain how the Chinese government transitioned from having big unrealizable developmental dreams to being at the helm of a powerful technocracy that is now expanding China鈥檚 global influence through massive energy projects that are reshaping the socioeconomic landscape and ecological infrastructure of countries worldwide. Currently, he is in the process of developing a third project on changing conceptions of national security in modern China. Dr. Meyskens also curates a website of images of everyday life in Maoist China. His research has been supported by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, NPS Naval Research Program, Fulbright International Institute of Education, and Fulbright-Hays Commission.
Teaching Interests:
History of Modern China
Science, Technology, and Society
History of East Asia
Modern World History
Awarded the Lieutenant Commander David L. Williams Outstanding Professor Award (2021)
Publications:
Book:
Meyskens, Covell. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).
Meyskens, Covell. 鈥淩ethinking the Political Economy of Development in Mao鈥檚 China.鈥� positions: asia critique (November 2021): 1-19. (Forthcoming)
Meyskens, Covell. 鈥淒reaming of a Three Gorges Dam amid the Troubles of Republican China.鈥� Journal of Modern Chinese History (October 2021): 1-20. (Forthcoming)
Meyskens, Covell. 2020. 鈥�.鈥� Cold War History (2020): 1-19.
Meyskens, Covell. 鈥�.鈥� Nonproliferation Review Vol. 26, No. 5/6 (2019): 1-19.
Meyskens, Covell. 鈥�.鈥� Twentieth Century China 40 (2015): 238-260.
Meyskens, Covell. 鈥淟e Monde Selon Katrina [The World According to Katrina].鈥� Dr么le d鈥櫭﹑oque 17 (2005).
Meyskens, Covell. 鈥淕uerre et Race dans le Pacifique: Signes et Pratiques [War and Race in the Pacific: Signs and Practices].鈥� Dr么le d鈥櫭﹑oque 16 (2005)
Meyskens, Covell. 鈥�.鈥滾ignes 16 (2005).
Book chapters:
Meyskens, Covell. 鈥�1964: The Massive Military Industrial Campaign to Defend China Against American and Soviet Imperialism.鈥� In Landscapes of Chinese Labour: A History of China鈥檚 Working Class, edited by Ivan Franceschini, Kevin Lin, Nicholas Loubere, and Christian Sorace. London: Verso, 2022. (Forthcoming)
Meyskens, Covell. 鈥淢ao鈥檚 Communist Party Dictatorship: Origins and Development.鈥� In , edited by Klaus Larres, 1-23. London: Routledge, 2021. (Forthcoming)
Meyskens, Covell. 鈥淟abour,鈥� in : Political Concepts from Mao to Xi, eds. Ivan Franceschini, Nicholas Loubere, and Christian Sorace (London: Verso, 2019).
Meyskens, Covell. 鈥淏uilding a Dam for China in the Three Gorges Region, 1919-1971.鈥� In , edited by Erik Swyngedouw and Filippo Menga, 207-222. London: Routledge, 2018.
Review Essays:
Meyskens, Covell. 鈥�.鈥� Twentieth Century China 43 (2018): 196-203.
Meyskens, Covell. 鈥�.鈥� Journal of International and Global Studies 5 (2014).
Policy Commentary
Meyskens, Covell. 鈥�.鈥� The Wilson Center, Cold War International History Project, September 9, 2020.