Post-doctoral Fellows 2007-2008

Ian D. Chapman, An Wang Post-doctoral Fellow
ichapman@princeton.edu

Ian Chapman received his PhD degree from Princeton University in 2007. At the Fairbank Center he will work on a book manuscript based on his dissertation project, relating to medieval Chinese festival culture. This focuses on constructions of regional, sectarian, and social identities, as well as the specifics of festival programs. He will also begin work on a second project, on Buddhist lay societies in northern China and Dunhuang, from the Northern Dynasties to the early Song.

He Wenkai 和文, An Wang Post-doctoral Fellow
hewenkai@mit.edu

He Wenkai received his PhD in 2007 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research is on Paths Toward a Modern Fiscal State: England (1642–1750), Japan (1868–1895), and China (1850–1911). According to Dr. He, this institutional change enabled the state to use centrally collected revenues from indirect taxes upon domestic consumption and the customs to mobilize long-term financial resources either through long-term borrowing or issuing paper notes. The modern fiscal state for the first time in history attained both political and fiscal centralization. It was able to introduce long-term credit instruments such as paper notes or state bonds into the economy, which greatly stimulated financial development and the use of credit instruments.

Fabio Lanza, An Wang Post-doctoral Fellow
flanza@email.arizona.edu

Fabio Lanza received his PhD from Columbia University in 2004. His research is on A Space for Politics: Inventing Students in Modern China. His work centers on the question of politicization, on how people become politicized, on how political subjectivities such as worker, activist, or student emerge and come to anchor and inform political action. Starting with the famous May Fourth (1919) demonstrations in China, almost all the cardinal moments in 20th century China have been signaled by an upsurge in student political activities. The locus classicus for student activism was Peking University. He hypothesizes that the political category of students came into existence through the confrontations that had the university, its relationship to learning and the state, and the very definition of “students” at their core.

Elana Chipman 秦琳珍, Taiwan Studies Post-doctoral Fellow
elanachipman@gmail.com

Elana Chipman received her PhD degree in 2007 from Cornell University. Her research at Harvard is titled Our Beigang: Culture Work, Ritual, and Community in Taiwan. This is based on 14 months of fieldwork carried out at Beigang, a popular-religious transnational pilgrimage center for the goddess Mazu in rural Taiwan. The fieldwork investigated political tensions and alliances among different factions and interests in the town, as well as between rival pilgrimage sites. Her work illustrates the adaptability of ritual and other cultural forms to changing circumstances and their role in shaping different levels of identity. For example, through observing amateur research, publication, and the organization of cultural activities, her analysis demonstrates how culture workers can be co-opted by the state for the production of nation-building narratives, yet at the same time contest and critique particular local formations of power by referencing idealized notions of an ‘authentic’ past.

Zheng Yu 鄭宇, Harvard-Princeton China In the World Postdoctoral Fellow
yzheng@ucsd.edu

Zheng Yu is a Harvard-Princeton China In the World Postdoctoral Fellow funded by the Fairbank Center. He received his PhD in 2007 from the University of California, San Diego. His dissertation was on the topic Credibility and Flexibility: Political Institutions and Foreign Direct Investment in China. He concluded that China has attracted massive amounts of FDI not despite its political institutions but partly because of them. While the authoritarian system is a big minus for potential investors who are concerned about political risk, it gives political elites the independence to initiate a set of institutional innovations to attract FDI. Local governments’ ability to attract FDI and promote economic growth is determined by three things: their credibility to deliver central policies; their capacity to maintain consistent policy; and their ability to put in place a legal environment in which contracts can be enforced and property rights established.

Zhang Zhiqiang 張志強, Harvard-Yenching Postdoctoral Fellow in Book Culture and Librarianship Postdoctoral Fellow
zzqiang@public1.ptt.js.cn

Zhang Zhiqiang received his PhD in 2005 from Nanjing University. At Harvard, his research topic will be Identity, Transformation, and Modernization: The Dissemination of Western Learning in Modern China and the Development of the Chinese Publishing Industry from 1840 to 1949. Western influence on China’s publishing industry helped to move publishing technology from woodblocks to presses and metal type. This influence also resulted in China’s move from traditional string-bound books to newspapers, magazines, and journals—publications that were fairly new in the West in the 1800s. Even the characteristics of Chinese books changed: writing was organized horizontally instead of in traditional vertical columns, hard covers replaced the old-style soft covers, and new binding methods were introduced. The result was that Western-style printed and bound books were often cheaper and easier to distribute. He will be at Harvard from November 2007. Contact: zzqiang@public1.ptt.js.cn.

Nara Dillon, Fairbank Center Postdoctoral Fellow
dillon@bard.edu

Nara Dillon received her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley in 2002. She teaches at Bard College. Her research this year will be about The Paradox of the Welfare State: The Politics of Privilege in Revolutionary Shanghai. Based on extensive research in the Shanghai Municipal Archives and other libraries in China, this book manuscript explores the politics behind the creation of a limited and inegalitarian welfare state in Maoist China. Even at its peak the workplace social insurance system only reached a minority of the Chinese population, primarily state employees and permanent workers in the large industrial enterprises. The various injustices at the core of this system, which existed in spite of the government’s continual pronouncements to the contrary, are the focus of the research.