Spread and Transformation of Urban Life

Anru Lee, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at John Jay College/CUNY will speak on urban life in Taiwan at Columbia University.

A cultural anthropologist, Dr. Lee's research focuses on the Asian Pacific region and issues of capitalism, modernity, gender and sexuality, and urban anthropology. She is the author of In the Name of Harmony and Prosperity: Labor and Gender Politics in Taiwan's Economic Restructuring (SUNY Press 2004) and is co-editor of Women in the New Taiwan: Gender Roles and Gender Consciousness in a Changing Society (ME Sharpe 2004). Her current project investigates rapid transit systems as related to issues of technology, governance, and citizenship. Her most recent fieldwork looks at the newly built Mass Rapid Transit systems in Taiwan in the context of the country's struggle for cultural and national identity.

Dr. Lee is an active member of the Society for the Anthropology of Work (SAW), a section under the American Anthropological Association.  She served as the SAW's contributing editor to the Anthropology News  (2002-2005) and is currently the secretary of the organization.