Contentious Politics of Transnational AIDS Institutions
This dissertation project centers around the historical trajectory of AIDS activism in China – from the early failed initiatives of the 1990s, to the first wave surrounding contaminated blood issues in rural areas from 1999-2004, and finally, to the second wave of a sexual-identity-based activism from 2005-2012. This process has generated an unprecedented rise of grassroots community organizations in public health in China, driven by the institutionalization of the transnational AIDS regime against ever tightening state control. Far from indicating a successful story of transnational intervention, however, the historical trajectory of Chinese AIDS activism signals a rather more complicated institutional building process of disease control and prevention, in which international organizations, the state, and social movement actors fight for authority over knowledge and policy.

Illness, Aging, and Long-Term Medical Care
This is an international collaborative project to study long-term medical care for the elderly in China that involves American and Chinese scholars from law, sociology, and social work. We place particular emphasis on the usage of disease, illness, and sickness in organizing certain intervention/treatment behaviors, rights, and individual responsibilities. After publishing the first article. I am currently working on another article “Gender, Medical Reform, and Managing Chronicle Illness.” This one analyze how medical welfare institutions generate gendered patterns of care work and aggravate discrepancies of chronic illness management among elderly women in rural and urban areas of China.

Cultures of Risk and Uncertainty: Reconfiguration of Biomedical Expertise
How does the over-emphasis on communicable diseases of transnational institutions affect cultural and institutional responses to chronic diseases at the national level? This project will focus on China, India, and Brazil – countries that are increasingly important actors in global health governance, with similar communicable epidemic patterns and drastically different health policy outcomes. Looking at both top-down and bottom-up processes, I will explore how counter-disease efforts are structured and organized, why some interventions are favored over others, and how certain organizational forms emerge or decline. In particular, I study how the risks and benefits of new medical technologies and intervention techniques are evaluated in global-local encounters by highlighting epistemic communities as a particular group of political actors – scientists and policy experts with authority over knowledge.

I have taught a range of courses in the U.S. and China. I am prepared to teach courses in any of the following areas: comparative-historical methods, ethnographic methods, sociological theory, feminist theory, political sociology, international relations, medical sociology, organizational studies, social movements, global gender and sexualities, and Asia- Pacific studies.

Solo Instructor
Sociological Theory
Department of Social Work, China Women’s University (Beijing)
Fall 2002-Winter 2003; 50 students

Teaching at China Women’s University, the first and best women’s college in China, honed my skills in translating, interpreting, and diffusing western ideas in an authoritarian context. I designed the course to provide an introduction to the works of eminent figures in sociological thought, from classical theorists such as Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and Simmel to contemporary theories and debates in sociology. The course asked students to compare how various thinkers explain political history and social change, and how authors’ contexts influenced their thinking.

In this introductory course, my primary goal was to orient students to the idea that the various challenges and problems of our age are not the result of any single individuals, but the outcome of broader societal meanings and collective actions. I encouraged and moderated discussion among students with widely differing backgrounds, levels of knowledge, and interests—many of whom were new to both sociology and college.

I taught this class with four colleagues from English, Psychology, Sociology, and American Culture. My responsibilities included designing and teaching one particular theme (Women and Work), as well as leading discussion and grading. The class also included a semester-long activism project that offered students the opportunity to explore in a sustained manner the ways in which feminist organizing is articulated in different social, cultural, and national contexts.

This interdisciplinary course includes areas of emphasis such as hypertension and vascular disease, cancer, diabetes, as well as other issues such as mental health, infertility, sports injuries, erectile dysfunction, and impotence. This course was taught by a teaching team, in which I was the scholar responsible for discussing the significance of gender vis-à-vis the above issues. I collaborated with leading experts in obstetrics and gynecology, public health, clinical social work, psychiatry, substance abuse research, transportation research, internal medicine, urologic oncology, and cardiovascular medicine.

This course introduces students to the myriad ways in which sexual desire and activity are structured by social relations. I focused particularly on cross-cultural and historical variations in sexual practices by bringing short comparative historical materials for students to analyze. Without feeling being forced to be “politically correct,” I demonstrated the significance of sexuality studies. This strategy challenges students to learn the value of ambiguity rather than oversimplification when addressing complex readings and ideological debate.

I trained and supervised a team of three undergraduate students who collected and coded archival data on the evolution of transnational institutions and AIDS activism in China. In addition to generating data for my dissertation, this project gave me additional experience teaching and mentoring students. In weekly meetings, I trained students in research methods, supervised their work, and discussed research design. I also mentored one of the students as she developed an independent research project on gay communities in China.

The general aim of this program was to meet the needs for a cohort of young Chinese university faculty members selected from diverse disciplines who were interested in the emergent field of gender studies, but had no academic resources for advanced learning. As an assistant instructor, my role was to translate teaching materials, facilitate lectures and discussion, and participate in administrative work.

Global Intercultural Experience for Undergraduates is an intercultural program with a fieldtrip component. China was a site in which Michigan students were given the opportunity to conduct community work with HIV-affected youth. Working as a teaching assistant, my responsibilities were to introduce background materials on NGO governance in China, design a culture-sensitive-evaluation tool, and assist communication between the Michigan team and local NGO communities in China.