Anthropology studies scholar to lecture on Urban Spaces in China at Fairfield University | Press Releases

Helen Siu, Ph.D., professor of Anthropology at Yale University, will deliver "Uncivil Urban Spaces in Post-Reform South China," on Thursday, April 14, at 4:30 p.m. in Room 101 of Fairfield University's DiMenna-Nyselius Library. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, is part of "China: Its People and Culture Lecture Series," sponsored by Li Educational Foundation and the University's History Department and Asian Studies Program.

Dr. Siu is the former chair of the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University. Her teaching interests include political and historical anthropology and urban and global culture change. Since the 1970s, she has conducted fieldwork in South China, exploring the nature of the Socialist state and the refashioning of identities through rituals, festivals, commerce and consumption.

Lately, she focuses on the rural-urban divide in Chinese cities, civil society and the middle classes in Hong Kong.

Dr. Siu, who holds a doctorate from Stanford University, was a member of the University Grants Committee and the Research Grants Council in Hong Kong. In the United States, she has served on the Committee for Advanced Study in China and the National Screening Committee for Fulbright awards. In 2001, she established the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences to promote creative, interdisciplinary research.

Her publications include "Mao's Harvest: Voices of China's New Generation," "Furrows: Peasants, Intellectuals and the State," and the forthcoming volume "Empire at the Margins: Culture, Ethnicity and Frontier in Early Modern China."

No tickets or reservations are required for the lecture. For more information, call Danke Li, Ph.D., Fairfield University professor of history, at (203) 254-4000, ext. 2353.