简介

I am a 50% faculty member in Department of Religious Studies and 50% in Department of East Asian Languages & Cultural Studies. I am a cultural anthropologist interested in the intertwined processes of religiosity, secularization, and state operations in modernity, post-colonial, and Communist conditions. Areas of research and teaching: Chinese religions & secularization; critical theory; China Studies, sovereignty and state power; gender and feminism; media studies; cultural approaches to political economy. I specialize in the study of China, with an interest in Sinophone cultures of Taiwan, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia and the West. Although my research is based on fieldwork in contemporary China and Taiwan, it is always informed by a vision of the longue durée of Chinese history, and I seek to reconcile Western critical theory with Chinese philosophy and Chinese empirical findings. I have assumed teaching, research, and visiting scholar positions at the University of Michigan, University of Chicago, Beijing University, Academia Sinica in Taiwan, Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and the Center for the Study of World Religion at Harvard University. I was Director of Asian Studies at the University of Sydney in Australia 2007-09.