Current NYU Shanghai Global Research Initiatives Fellows

Wang’s dissertation aims at exploring the problematic of individuality and the politics of individuation in 20th century Chinese literature. The New Sensualist School (新感觉派) in the 1990s particularly focuses on Shanghai as a theme of short stories, a place where things happen, and a locus for a peculiar understanding of individuality and modernity. Thus, an exploration of the New Sensualist School and problematic individuality will contribute to a reexamination of the history of modern Chinese literature, as well as situate the so-called modernist writings during that period with the realist writings in the May Fourth Movement (and its aftermath) in a new fashion. Wang intends to collect relevant materials at the Shanghai Library, the Fudan University Library, and the materials kept by the institute of the Shanghai Writers’ Association.

Sooter’s project explores how the devastation arising from the Taiping Rebellion [1850- 64], the socio-political upheavals during the last decades of Qing rule, and the influx of global intellectual trends produced the category of “religion” in China, and affected Chinese thought on religious practices. By studying the post-Taiping Qing period, he will interrogate how the modern category of religion was disseminated in conditions of already evolving Chinese intellectual paradigms. His research aims to provide a more nuanced understanding of how Chinese actors engaged and translated foreign knowledge from within their own dynamic milieus, though often on terms that were not of their choosing. Sooter will primarily engage in research at the Shanghai Library and Fudan University Library.

Du’s dissertation, Parenthood and the State in China, 1800-1949, discusses the changing relationship between state legitimacy and legal regulation of parent-child relations in China’s transitional period of the 19th and the early 20th century. Her research is based on both archival research and published documents such as newspapers, code books, and case books. After two summers of onsite research, Du has finished the majority of her archival research. While in Shanghai she plans to complete her research in the Municipal Archives and the Second Historical Archives of China (in Nanjing).