Talk by Jordan T. Christopher, Loyola Marymount University.
Thursday, April 16, 2026
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
Bunche Hall 10383
In the increasing body of comparative studies that examine Sino-Mediterranean subjects, a major recurring observation is that a key source of difference is to be found in the citizenship traditions of the Greeks and Romans. It is clearly the majority opinion that early China did not develop citizenship, but detailed examinations of a possible Chinese citizenship in the ancient period have not been undertaken. This talk confirms the view that early China did not develop citizenship by examining Greek citizen paradigms against the phenomenon of the Zhou-dynasty Guoren 國人, upheld as the closest proximate development to citizenship. The differences between the two will be highlighted, then traced back in time. Finding a uniquely parallel moment in Mycenaean and Shang dynasty social and political structures, it becomes clear that the true divergence between “east” and “west” arises with the end of these Bronze Age polities, with their nature of their collapses proving decisive in how political structures would develop for centuries to come.
Jordan Christopher is a Lecturer in the Department of Classics and Archaeology at Loyola Marymount University. He specializes in comparative approaches to the study of Greece, Rome, and China. His first monograph, The Pioneer Kingdoms of Macedon and Qin (Cambridge 2025), examined the oddly parallel historical rises of these once-peripheral polities as a means to examine the underappreciated determinative impact of cultural practices in political development. He is editor of the edited volume Postcolonial Perspectives on Global Antiquities, at press with Routledge, and he is currently working on his second monograph, Citizen and Subject: Civic Identity in Greece, Rome, and China. Lastly, he also runs the LMU Roman Re-enactment Project, which appears at events throughout Los Angeles.
Co-sponsored with
UCLA Global Antiquity.
Sponsor(s): Center for Chinese Studies