Bio

I am a China historian working at the juncture of history and anthropology. Besides early studies of the origins of 20th century warlordism, I have mostly focused on ritual or folk religion, with support from the Fulbright Program, the Taiwan National Endowment for Culture and the Arts, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, the Joint Committee on Chinese Studies of the ACLS and SSRC, and St John’s College, Cambridge. I have published on religious and social change in 20th century Taiwan, and on late imperial social relations explored through religion, and will gather some of the articles for a book on ritual in Chinese societies.

Another line of research explores ethnicity and religion in two remote areas: West Hunan and the Tibetan borderlands. The second project, conducted jointly with the historian Xiaofei Kang (George Washington University), centers on a World Heritage site, with the support of collaborative summer grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Our book in draft, “Contesting the Yellow Dragon,” is a case study of ethnicity, religious practice, tourism and environmentalism. As an offshoot of this work, I am examining state formation in Aba Autonomous Tibetan and Qiang Prefecture in the early People’s Republic.

I am a contributing editor for the Journal of Ritual Studies and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Ethnology (民族学刊), Chengdu, China.