Activism and Shifting Identities of Self-Identified Gay Men in Postsocialist China

Professor Zheng from SUNY-Cortland will speak on activism and shifting identities of self-identified gay men in China at Yale University.

Tiantian Zheng's bio:

My research focuses on the cultural politics of gender, sex, class, migration, and power during the political, social, and cultural transformations in postsocialist China.  My first ethnography traces the profound intersection between state power, the rise of entrepreneurial masculinity, rural migrant women, and the sex industry in the context of post-socialism and globalization. My second ethnography examines the interplay of gender politics, nationalism, and state power that inhere in practices of birth control, disease control (STIs and HIV/AIDS), condom use, and control of women’s bodies in the context of postsocialist China’s economic and political liberalization.  My edited journal issue in Wagadu and my edited volume by Routledge explore the life experiences, agency, and human rights of women who are involved in a variety of activities that are characterized as “trafficked” terrains in a de-territorialized and re-territorialized world, to shed light on the complicated processes in which anti-trafficking, human rights and social justice are intersected.   I am also the lead author of a book on HIV/AIDS through an anthropology lens, which explores the epidemiological, cultural, political and economic theoretical paradigms on HIV/AIDS and apply them to regional and topic case studies.  My current research explores the political, economic, and cultural factors that contextualize homosexual men’s sexual behaviors in the context of international lesbian and gay movement and postsocialist China’s economic and political liberalization.