John A. Rapp*, (1986), department chair, political science, professor

B.A., American University; M.A., Indiana University; Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison

Phone: 608-363-2335

Email: rappja@beloit.edu

John Rapp joined the faculty at Beloit College in 1986 where he teaches courses in comparative politics. He founded the Asian Studies program in 1987 and served as its chair for ten years. He also served as chair of the Political Science department from 1996-1999 and again starting in 2014. From 2002-2005 he served as Director of Asian Studies Programming under the first installment of Beloit's Freeman Foundation grant. In 1988-89 he was interim director of the Center for Language Studies, Beloit's summer intensive language program.

His primary teaching interests include Chinese politics, Communist and post-Communist systems, comparative democracies and electoral systems, and Chinese and comparative political thought. Besides his regular comparative politics offerings, he teaches courses on comparative revolutions, dissent, anarchism, and political fiction.

In March 2005 he led a faculty-staff study tour to Hong Kong and Guangdong in the People's Republic of China. In May 2006 he participated in a Beloit faculty-staff study tour to Hungary, and in the summer of 2007 he joined a faculty-staff travel group to China to help inaugurate Beloit's two new exchange programs in Kaifeng and Jinan. He also taught a concentrated mini-course on German politics at Beloit’s former exchange program in Hamburg, Germany in 1999. He has been selected to participate in several seminars for college professors over the years, including CIEE Faculty Development Seminars in Berlin (June 1990) and Hong Kong (1992), as well as the American Political Science Association (APSA) seminar on Japanese Politics (August 1990). His awards include the Beloit College Mouat Chair for Younger Faculty in International Studies from 1992-96, a faculty sabbatical grant to the University of Michigan in 1992-93 from the Program on Inter-institutional Collaboration in Area Studies (PICAS); a National Endowment for the Humanities Reading Grant for Private College Faculty (which included travel to Hungary) in May-June 1990; and a Pacific Cultural Foundation (PCF) Faculty Research Grant for the Fall of 2000.

His publications include the books Daoism and Anarchism: Critiques of State Autonomy in Anciewnt and Mdoern China (NY and London: Bloomsbury Press, 2012) and Autocracy and China's Rebel Founding Emperors: Comparing Chairman Mao and Ming Taizu (coauthored with Anita Andrew) (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Press, 2000). His published articles and book chapters include “Anarchism or Nihilism?: The Buddhist-Influenced Thought of Wu Nengzi,” in Alexandre Christoyannopoulos (ed.), Religious Anarchism: New Perspectives(Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009); “Daoism as Utopian or Accommodationist: Radical Daoism Reexamined in Light of the Guodian Manuscripts,” in Laurence Davis and Ruth Kinna (eds.), Anarchism and Utopianism (University of Manchester Press, 2009); “Clashing Dilemmas: Hong Rengan, Issachar Roberts, and a Taiping ‘Murder’ Mystery,” Journal of Historical Biography 4 (Autumn 2008): 27-58, online at http://www.ufv.ca/jhb/Volume_4/Volume_4_Rapp.pdf; “Utopian, Anti-Utopian, and Dystopian Ideas in Philosophical Daoism,” Comparative Asian Development 2:2 (Fall 2003): 211-231; “Maoism and Anarchism: Mao Zedong's Response to the Anarchist Critique of Marxism,” Anarchist Studies 9 (2001): 3-28; “Daoism and Anarchism Reconsidered,”Anarchist Studies 6: 2 (October1998): 123-152; and “The Fate of Marxist Democrats in Leninist Party-States:China's Debate on the Asiatic Mode of Production,” Theory and Society16 (1987): 709-740. He is currently working on a biography project on Issachar J.Roberts, the 19th century southern Baptist China missionary who served as mentor and advisor to the leaders of China’s Taiping rebellion.

This volume in the Contemporary Anarchist Studies series focuses on anti-statist critiques in ancient and modern China and demonstrates that China does not have an unchallenged authoritarian political culture.

Treating anarchism as a critique of centralized state power, the work first examines radical Daoist thought from the 4th century BCE to the 9th century CE and compares Daoist philosophers and poets to Western anarchist and utopian thinkers. This is followed by a survey of anarchist themes in dissident thought in the People's Republic of China from 1949 to the present. A concluding chapter discusses how Daoist anarchism can be applied to any anarchist-inspired radical critique today.

This work not only challenges the usual ideas of the scope and nature of dissent in China, it also provides a unique comparison of ancient Chinese Daoist anarchism to Western anarchist. Featuring previously untranslated texts, such as the 9th century Buddhist anarchist tract, the Wunengzi, and essays from the PRC press, it will be an essential resource to anyone studying anarchism, Chinese political thought, political dissent, and political history.