The Department of Asian Studies, at the University of British Columbia, invites you to our annual Yip So Man Wat Lecture featuring Professor Helen F. Siu, a professor of Anthropology and former chair of the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University. This year’s lecture, entitled The Worldly Engagement of the Greater Pearl River Delta Region, will discuss the rise of trading hubs with multi-ethnic identities and resources. It will comment on the region’s paths of development and conflict, and how, ultimately, the movement of goods, people, and ideas in South China has bridged continental divides.
Wednesday, October 3rd, 2018
6pm Reception with light refreshments
7pm Lecture
Asian Centre Auditorium, 1871 West Mall, Vancouver
Free & open to the public. Online registration is required.
About the Speaker:
Helen F. Siu is a professor of Anthropology and former chair of the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University. She grew up in Hong Kong and attended Carleton College and Stanford University. Prof. Siu has conducted decades of fieldwork in South China, exploring agrarian change, the nature of the socialist state, and the refashioning of identities. Lately, she has become interested in rural-urban interface in China, inter-Asian connections, and China-Africa encounters. Prof. Siu has served in numerous funding and research assessment committees in the United States, Europe, and Asia, and she was the founding director of the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Hong Kong, which is devoted to cross-disciplinary research and global collaborations. Her recent publications include Asia Inside Out (2 volumes; Harvard University Press, 2015); Tracing China: A Forty-Year Ethnographic Journey (Hong Kong University Press, 2016); and “China-Africa Encounters: Historical Legacies and Contemporary Realities,” Annual Review of Anthropology 46 (November 2017).