Colby College | Directory

Hong Zhang
Associate Professor of East Asian Studies
East Asian Studies
Affiliated Department(s): Anthropology

Phone: 207-859-4417
Fax: 859-4705
Email: hzhang@colby.edu

Mailing Address:
4400 Mayflower Hill
Waterville, Maine 04901-8844

Education

Post-Doctoral fellow, Fairbank Center for East Asian Studies, Harvard University
Ph.D., Anthropology, Columbia University
M.Phil., Anthropology, Columbia University
MA, Anthropology, Columbia University
MA, English, Wuhan University, China
BA, English, Huazhong Normal University, Wuhan, China

Areas of Expertise:

Labor migration, gender, and NGOs

Family, rural life, and urbanization in contemporary China

Aging and population studies

Chinese culture and language

Professional Information

I received my Ph. D. in Anthropology from Columbia University, and did my post-doctorate research at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Studies, Harvard University. At Colby College, I teach both Chinese language and Chinese culture courses. My research interests include: family and marriage, intergenerational relations, population aging, gender, urbanization, rural-urban migration, social reforms and contemporary Chinese society. In the past ten years, I have been doing research in a village in central China documenting changes in marriage patterns and family dynamics. In more recent years I have begun to study migrant labor and urbanization process in the Pearl River Delta where many rural young people from the interior provinces including the village I have studied come to seek wage labor and urban life.

Other Courses Taught

Course	Course Title
EA 257	From Communism to Consumerism

Current Research

ASIANetwork Freeman Student-Faculty Fellowship, Summer 2007.

�Navigating a Space for Labor Activism: Emergent Labor NGOs in the Pearl River Delta of South China,� co-authored, in preparation as a book chapter for Between State and Society: Negotiating the Welfare Regime in China.

"Citizen Agents": From Migrant Workers to Professional Rights Defenders. A research project documenting the rise of rights-defense movement by self-taught migrant workers using law and the legal system to defend the labor rights of their fellow workers.

�The Role of NGOs in the Civil Society Development and Democratization in China: A Case Study of the Peking University Women�s Law Studies and Legal-Aid Center,� in collaboration with Jianmei Guo, director and founder of the Peking University Women's Law Studies and Legal-Aid Center.

"Developing Workplace Mechanisms for Protecting Women�s Rights and Anti-Sexual Harassments in China,� in collaboration with Jianmei Guo and Zhuqing Wang of the Peking University's Women's Law Studies and Legal-Aid Center.

Publications

(In Press) Holding up More Than Half the Sky: Chinese Women Garment Workers in New York City, 1948-92. Bao Xiaolan. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 2001. On the translation team of turning this book into Chinese.

(In press) "Active Aging in China: Engaging the Limits of Filial Devotion,� a book chapter for the 3rd edition of Cultural Context of Aging: World-Wide Perspective, edited by Jay Sokolovsky.

(Forthcoming). "Labor Migration, Gender, and the Rise of Neo-local Marriages in the Economic Boomtown of Dongguan, South China." Journal of Contemporary China.

2007. "From Resisting to �Embracing�? the One-Child Policy: Understanding New Fertility Trends in a Central Chinese Village." The China Quarterly . Vol. 192: 855-875.

2007. "China�s New Rural Daughters Coming of Age: Downsizing the Family and Firing up Cash Earning Power in the New Economy." Signs, Journal of Women in Culture and Society. Vol 32, no.3:671-698.

2007. �Toil and Tears behind the Shenzhen Miracle: Migrant Labor in Shenzhen.� Guest Editor�s Introduction. Chinese Economy (M.E. Sharpe). May-June 2007. Vol. 40, NO. 3, pp.3-11.

2007. On the Margins of Society: Migrant Labor in South China (Bianyuan ren: Shenzhen wailaigong yanjiu. Liu Kaiming. Xinhua Press, 2003). Translation of four chapters of the book for a special issue of Chinese Economy (M.E. Sharpe).May-June 2007. Vol. 40, NO. 3.

2007. �Who Will Care for Our Parents? Changing Boundaries of Family and Public Roles in Providing Care for the Aged in China.� Journal of Long Term Home Health Care. Vol. 25 (1):39-46.

2007. "Chinese Numeral Classifiers." Journal of East Asian Linguistics. 16:43-59.

2006. Chapter 6. "SARS Humor for the Virtual Community: Between the Chinese Emerging Public Sphere and the Authoritarian State." In Deborah Davis and Helen Hsu, eds., SARS: Reception and Interpretation in Three Chinese Cities. London/New York: Routledge. Pp. 119-145.

2006. �Family Care or Residential Care? The Moral and Practical Dilemmas Facing the Elderly in Urban China.� Asian Anthropology. Vol. 5:57-83.

2006. Chapter 8: "Making Light of the Dark Side: SARS Jokes and Humor in China. In Arthur Kleinman and James Watson, eds., SARS in China: Prelude to Pandemic? Stanford University Press. Use Internet Explorer to read the Chinese jokes used in this chapter.

2005. "Bracing for an Uncertain Future: A Case Study of New Coping Strategies of Rural Parents under China's Birth Control Policy, "The China Journal, pp.53-76.

2004. "Chinese Shamanism (Contemporary)," with Constantine Hriskos. In Mariko Walter and Eva Fridman (eds.), Encyclopedia of Shamanism. Santa Barbara (CA): ABC-CLIO Publishing, pp.713-721.

2004. 'Living Alone' and the Rural Elderly: Strategy and Agency in Post-Mao Rural China." In Charlotte Ikels (ed.), Filial Piety: Practice and Discourse in Contemporary East Asian Countries. CA: Stanford University Press, pp. 63-87.

2003. "Contemporary Chinese Shamanism: The Re-Invention of Tradition," with Constantine Hriskos, Cultural Survival Quarterly, Vol. 26 (6): 55-57.

2002. "Between Reality and Representation: Social Control and Gender Relations in Chinese Proverbs." In Marlis Hellinger and Hadumod Bussmann, (eds.), Gender Across Languages: The De/construction of Gender Roles through Language Variation and Change. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 73-80.

2001. Guest Editor's Introduction, "Eldercare Issues in Contemporary China," Journal of Chinese Sociology and Anthropology. Vol.34 (1), pp. 1-25.

2001 Guest editor and co-translator, "Eldercare Issues in Contemporary China, Part I," Journal of Chinese Sociology and Anthropology, Vol. 34 (1)

2002. Guest editor and co-translator, "Eldercare Issues in Contemporary China, Part II," Journal of Chinese Sociology and Anthropology, Vol. 34 (2)

1995. English-Chinese Lexicon of Women and Law. Beijing: China Translation and Publishing Corporation and UNESCO (Participated in the Chinese team to translate the lexicon entries from English into Chinese).

1992. "Spare Women a Beating for Three Days, They Will Stand on the Roof and Tear the House Apart"- Images of Women in Chinese Proverbs". In Locating Power: the Proceedings of the Berkeley Women and Language Conference. Kira Hall et al. (eds.). Berkeley: University of California Press, pp.590-600.

1991. "Liberation for Whom? A Revie of Recent Western Literature on Women's Rights in China." Human Rights Tribune 2 (4): 9-12. New York: Human Rights in China Inc.,