Thomas D. Lutze specializes in Asian History. Having completed graduate studies at Cornell University, Peking University, and the University of Wisconsin  (Ph.D., 1996), Tom teaches a wide variety of courses ranging from introductory surveys of China and Japan to focused courses on 20th Century Asia, including WWII in the Pacific, the Chinese Revolution, Modern Japan, and the Vietnam Wars. He teaches a very special May Term travel course in China, hosted and co-sponsored by the History Department of Peking University. His research and writing center on the intellectual, social, and political roles of the urban and rural middle classes in the Chinese revolution from the 1930s onward.  His first book, China's Inevitable Revolution: Rethinking America's Loss to the Communists (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2007), explores the pivotal battle between the United States and the Chinese Communists for the allegiance of the urban liberal democrats during the civil war, 1945-1949. Most recently, Tom has worked on a new edited volume entitled, Radicalism, Revolution, and Reform in Modern China: Essays in Honor of Maurice Meisner (2010). His chapter, "Post-Socialist Capitalism in Rural China," examines the economic basis--in particular the controversies over land ownership--at the root of the tens of thousands of peasant protests in China over the past decade.

Tom is a member of the Asian Studies team with the International Studies Program, and he has been selected as Director of the 2011 IWU London Program, offering a new course, "The Bloody History of Afternoon Tea: The British Empire and Asia."

Courses