From visiting family in China during summer breaks growing up, I became acutely aware of the devastation and suffering that occurred during the Japanese occupation of our hometown of Nanjing. Museums, movies, television programs, and commemorative art kept the Nanjing Massacre alive in public memory. But what I also noticed, from visits to museums, shuffling through television channels, and discussions with family, was the seeming absence of Chinese resistance.
Lucy Sun
Lucy Sun will be a senior in the Fall 2020 semester. She is majoring in History and minoring in Psychology and Law. One of the students sharing the 2020 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellowship at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, she is conducting research with survivor testimonies from the Nanjing Massacre collection in the Visual History Archive to contribute to her history honors thesis entitled “Escapes and Deceptions: Chinese Women’s Resistance During the Nanjing Massacre.” Her thesis expands on her previous research on women’s resistance to sexual violence during the Nanjing Massacre, a topic largely unacknowledged in the scholarly literature. The 101 testimonies by Nanjing Massacre survivors in the VHA are essential to her project. Ms. Sun is fluent in Mandarin, and in her proposal, she expressed her commitment to amplifying the voices of women survivors and her motivation to learn more about her hometown’s infamous atrocity. In her project, Ms. Sun will explore important and neglected topics (resistance, women’s resistance, sexual violence) and will be the Center’s first research fellow to focus exclusively on the Nanjing Massacre collection. She is an engaged young scholar, with past research experience at the USC Culture, Diversity, and Psychophysiology Lab and employment at the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture.
Articles by Lucy Sun
