Gender and Hybridity: Shanghai Eurasians in the 1920s and 1930s

The Fairbank Center of Chinese Studies presents a session featuring Professor Emma Teng of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Emma Teng, T.T. and Wei Fong Chao Professor of Asian Civilizations; MacVicar Faculty Fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Emma Teng teaches courses in Chinese culture, Chinese migration history, Asian American history, East Asian culture, and women’s and gender studies. Professor Teng earned her Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University, where she specialized in Chinese studies and Asian American studies. Her first book, Taiwan's Imagined Geography: Chinese Colonial Travel Writing and Pictures, 1683-1895 (2004) a study of Chinese colonial discourses on Taiwan, places the China-Taiwan relationship in the historical context of Chinese imperial expansionism. Her latest book, Eurasian: Mixed Identities in the United States, China and Hong Kong, 1842-1943 (2013), examines ideas concerning racial intermixing and the lived experiences of mixed families in China and the US between 1842 and 1943. Teng has also published articles in both US and international academic journals.

Professor Teng was an American Fellow of the American Association for University Women (1996-97), a J. Paul Getty Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Art and the Humanities (2000-2001), and holder of the MIT Class of 1956 Career Development Professorship (2002-2005). In 2005 she was a recipient of the Levitan Prize in the Humanities and a co-winner (with Professor Erik Demaine of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) of the MIT Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award. She was awarded the Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowship for Recently Tenured Scholars by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and spent the academic year 2007-2008 as a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. In 2013, Teng was named a MacVicar Faculty Fellow for her contributions to undergraduate teaching at MIT. She has served on various Institute committees, including the Committee on Race and Diversity, and as the Director of the MIT Program in Women's and Gender Studies. Beyond MIT, she has served on the Board of Directors for the Association for Asian Studies, as Chair of the China and Inner Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies, as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Asian Studies, and on the Faculty Advisory Committee of the Harvard-Yenching Institute. Her current projects include an exhibit on the early history (1877-1931) of Chinese students at MIT for the MIT Libraries’ Maihaugen Gallery.

Discussant: Karen Teoh, Associate Professor of History, Stonehill College

Karen Teoh's research focuses on Chinese global migration and diaspora from the 17th century to the present, and examines how notions of gender, ethnicity and cultural hybridity have shaped the identities of groups and individuals. She is currently working on a book manuscript titled Schooling Diaspora, about the reach and influence of women's transnational networks through Chinese and English girls' schools in colonial Southeast Asia. Professor Teoh has received grants from the American Association of University Women and the Taiwan Fellowship. She was also awarded a Post-Doctoral Fellowship from the Consortium for Faculty Diversity at Liberal Arts Colleges, and two Certificates of Distinction in Teaching from Harvard.

Organizer: Elizabeth Remick, Associate Professor of Political Science, Tufts University

Elizabeth Remick teaches courses on Chinese Politics, political corruption, and gender, work and politics in East Asia. Her current project examines a historical issue from Republican China (1911-1949): how the system of prostitution affected the construction of local state institutions in different parts of the country. It looks at the ways local governments' decisions about how (or whether) to tax and regulate prostitution influenced their ability to build modern states that could provide roads, armies, schools, and other governmental functions. The book argues that states' decisions about the gendered business of prostitution thus had a direct effect on the structure and function of local states. Professor Remick holds a B.A. in Political Science and Chinese Language from Wellesley College, and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University. Before coming to Tufts, she taught at the University of Oregon, and also taught English at the Xiangtan Mining Institute in Xiangtan, Hunan, China. She received a China Research Award from the American Council of Learned Societies/Social Science Research Council in 2002, and held a post-doctoral fellowship from the Harvard University Fairbank Center for East Asian Research in 2000. In 2000, she received the Tufts University Undergraduate Initiative in Teaching (UNITE) Award for Junior faculty.