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Prof. Yang received her Ph.D.
in Anthropology at U.C. Berkeley, and has taught at U.C. Santa Barbara
since 1987. She has also assumed teaching, research, and visiting scholar
positions at the University of Michigan, University of Chicago, Beijing
University, Academia Sinica in Taiwan, the Institute for Advanced Study
in Princeton, and the Center for the Study of World Religion at Harvard
University.
Yang is interested in issues
of religion, secularization, and the state in modernity, especially
in the tensions and traumas accompanying the break with traditional
orders under colonial and post-colonial conditions. Her areas of research
and teaching are: critical theory; gender and feminism; media studies;
sovereignty and state power; and cultural approaches to political economy.
Yang's cultural and geographical
region of specialization is China and China's offshoot cultures and
diaspora in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia and the West. Although
her research is based on fieldwork in contemporary China and Taiwan,
her approach is always informed by a vision of the longue duree in Chinese
history, and she has published on ancient China.
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Research:
With a five-year National
Science Foundation research grant, she has conducted fieldwork in rural
Wenzhou, China since 1991 on the revival of popular religion and lineages
and their negotiations with state secularization. The title of her book
in-progress is: Re-Enchanting Modernity: Sovereignty, Ritual Economy,
and Indigenous Civil Order in Coastal China.
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- Chinese Religiosities:
Disjunctures of Modernity and State Formation.
Edited by Mayfair Mei-hui Yang (forthcoming)
- Spaces of Their Own:
Women’s Public Sphere in Transnational China. Mayfair Yang,
editor. University of Minnesota Press, (1999).
- Gifts, Favors, and
Banquets: the Art of Social Relationships in China. Cornell University
Press, (1994). (American Ethnological Society First Book Prize, 1997)
- "Ritual Economy and
Rural Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics" in Cultural
Politics in a Global Age: Uncertainty, Solidarity and Innovation.
David Held and Henrietta Moore, editors. Oxford: Oneworld Publications,
2007.
- "A Sweep of Red:
State Subjects and the Cult of Mao" in Religion und Politik
in der Volksrepublik China (Religion and Politics in Contemporary
China). Wiebke Koenig, Matthias Koenig, and Karl-Fritz Daiber, eds.
Würzburg: Ergon-Verlag, 2006.
- “Spatial Struggles:
State Disenchantment and Popular Re-appropriation of Space in Rural
Southeast China” in Journal of Asian Studies, (August,
2004).
available at: http://repositories.cdlib.org/gis/30/
- “Goddess across
the Taiwan Straits: Matrifocal Ritual Space, Nation-State, and Satellite
Television Footprints” in Public Culture (May, 2004)
available at: http://repositories.cdlib.org/gis/31/
- “Using the Past
to Negate the Present: Ritual Ethics and State Rationality in Ancient
China” in Religion: A Reader in the Anthropological Tradition.
Michael Lambek, ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002.
- "Une histoire du
present: Gouvernement rituel et gouvernement d'Etat dans la Chine
ancienne", in Annales, no. 5, Sept.-Oct. (1991).
- "Mass Media and Transnational
Subjectivity in Shanghai: Notes on (Re)cosmopolitanism in a Chinese
Metropolis" in The Anthropology of Globalization: A Reader.
Jonathan Inda and Renato Rosaldo, eds. Oxford: Blackwell (2002).
- “Putting Global
Capitalism in its Place: Economic Hybridity, Bataille, and Ritual
Expenditure” in Current Anthropology, vol. 41, no.
4, (2000).
- "The Gift Economy
and State Power in China", Comparative Studies in Society
& History, vol. 31, no. 1, January (1989).
- "The Modernity of
Power in the Chinese Socialist Order", Cultural Anthropology,
v. 3, no. 4, November (1988).
Documentaries:
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“Through
Chinese Women’s Eyes” (1997)
50-minute documentary comparing Chinese urban women’s lives
during the era of state feminism and gender erasure during the Maoist
era, with the current era of commercialization, featuring gender
difference, commodification of sexuality, and globalization. Film
includes clips of Cultural Revolution and “revolutionary model
operas”, as well as interviews with urban workers, intellectuals,
and social workers in Shanghai and Beijing. (distributed by Women
Make Movies: info@wmm.com and screened at the Creteil Women's International
Film Festival in Paris, France).
(video
clip 1 in Quicktime link)
(video
clip 2 in Quicktime link)
To order this film, click here: http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c414.shtml
-
“Public
and Private Realms in Rural Wenzhou, China” (1994)
50-minute documentary about changes in a local community in rural
southeast China: scenes of market economy, plowing of rice paddy,
household factory, festival at deity temple, lineage ancestor hall,
Old People’s Association, Christian church, and private school.
(formerly distributed by U.C. Media Extension)
(video
clip in Quicktime link -takes a few seconds to load )
(To order this film, please contact the filmmaker, Mayfair Yang,
directly at: yangm@religion.ucsb.edu.
Only DVD's available to institutions for $75.00 and for private
individuals for $30.00. No rentals.
Courses
Taught:
- “Critical Theory”
(Relig Stud 200D)
- “Ethnographic Approaches
to the Study of Religious Life” (Relig Stud 292EG)
- “Chinese Religions:
Past and Present” (Relig Stud 125)
- “Problems in the
Study of Religion” (Relig Stud 104)
- "Contemporary Issues
in Cultural Anthropology" (Anthro 229C)
- "Anthropology of
Gender" (Anthro 125)
- "Anthropology of
Media, Gender and Globalization" (Anthro 255)
- "Modernity and East
Asia," (Anthro 154)
- "Anthropology of
the State," (Anthro 216)
- "Religion, Modernity,
and Politics" (Anthro 250MY)
- "Elements of Traditional
Chinese Culture," (Anthro 138A)
- "Contemporary Chinese
Society." (Anthro 138B)
- “China Through
Film (Anthro 177)
Courses
Proposed:
- “Sovereignty and
Governmentality” (Relig. Stud grad seminar)
- ”Religion and Media”
(Relig. Stud grad seminar)
- “Religions of China”
(Relig. Stud grad seminar)
Curriculum
Vitae:
http://www.religion.ucsb.edu/faculty/Mayfair_Yang_CV.pdf
East
Asian Languages & Cultures Department
East
Asia Center
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