CHR Book Launch Event
Monday, February 13, 2023 3:00 PM EST
Please join us for a celebration and discussion with Professors Michael G. Chang (History) and Huwy-min Lucia Liu (Anthropology) on her new book, Governing Death, Making Persons: The New Chinese Way of Death.
This will be a hybrid event taking place on Monday, February 13, 2023 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm in Horizon Hall 6325 (Mason Fairfax campus) or via Zoom. The zoom link will be provided in CHR's newsletter which you can sign up to receive by emailing chr@gmu.edu.
Book & Speakers
Governing Death, Making Persons tells the story of how economic reforms and changes in the management of death in China have affected the governance of persons. The Chinese Communist Party has sought to channel the funeral industry and death rituals into vehicles for reshaping people into "modern" citizens and subjects. Huwy-min Lucia Liu writes about the funerals she witnessed and the life stories of two kinds of funeral workers: state workers who are quasi-government officials and semilegal private funeral brokers. She shows that end-of-life commemoration in urban China today is characterized by the resilience of social conventions and not a shift toward market economy individualization. Rather than seeing a rise of individualism and the decline of a socialist self, Liu sees the durability of socialist, religious, communal, and relational ideas of self, woven together through creative ritual framings in spite of their contradictions.
Dr. Huwy-min Lucia Liu is an Assistant Professor in the department of Sociology and Anthropology. Dr. Liu received her Ph.D. in Anthropology at Boston University, an MPhil and an MA in Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and a BA in Journalism at National Chengchi University in Taiwan. Dr. Liu’s research focuses on social change in authoritarian and socialist regimes. Specifically, she explores how ordinary Chinese people navigate through and respond to structural changes through topics on citizenship, identity, governance, and activism.
Michael G. Chang is an Associate Professor in the department of History and Art History. Dr. Chang is a specialist in the history of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). He received his A.B. in sociology and East Asian Studies from Princeton University and his Ph.D in Chinese history from the University of California, San Diego. His current research focuses upon the political and material cultures in and through which High Qing rule (1680-1820) was constituted, especially as revealed in practices of material exchange and network formation at the Qing court.
