Huwy-min Lucia Liu

Huwy-min Lucia Liu

Huwy-min Lucia Liu

Associate Professor

Anthropology: Cultural Anthropology; Political Anthropology; Politics, Economy and Religion; Socialism and Change; Subjectivity and Governance; Civil Society; Life and Death Studies; Ritual Studies; Culture and Emotion; Gender and Masculinity; China and Taiwan

At the core of my research is a drive to understand how individuals arrive at, understand, and navigate their everyday lives under authoritarian and democratic political regimes as they interact with specific cultural ideas, social norms, institutions, flows of capital, and other forms of power. My research projects, in their broadest sense, investigate the intended and unintended consequences of governing power in creating specific kinds of subjects. I engage with these fundamental concerns through ethnographic fieldwork in China and Taiwan. 

I have several research projects at different stages of development. My first published book, Governing Death, Making Persons: The New Chinese Way of Death (Cornell University Press), tells the story of how economic reforms and changes in the management of death in China have affected the governance of persons. The Chinese Communist Party has sought to channel the funeral industry and death rituals into vehicles for reshaping people into "modern" citizens and subjects. Since the Reform and Opening-up period and the marketization of state funeral parlors, the Party has promoted personalized funerals in the hope of promoting a market-oriented and individualistic ethos. However, things have not gone as planned. My book shows that end-of-life commemoration in urban China today is characterized by the resilience of social conventions and not a shift toward market economy individualization. Rather than seeing a rise of individualism and the decline of a socialist self in contemporary China, I saw the durability of socialist, religious, communal, and relational ideas of self, woven together through creative ritual framings in spite of their contradictions.

Expanding my interest in the relationships between governance and subject formation, one of my new research projects explores how governing nature has changed in contemporary China. I do so by exploring how and why the Chinese Communist Party decided to introduce a National Park System since the 2000s. 

Finally, building on this new interest in governing nature, my new book project examines the rise of Formosan Black Bear conservation in contemporary Taiwan. By examining the Formosan Black Bear as a national totem, a subject of scientific inquiry and conservation, and a co-living entity in Taiwan, this study tackles how the colonial relationships between humans and animals, Han and Indigenous peoples, and Taiwanese who migrated to Taiwan before and after 1949 have changed since the end of martial law in the 1980s. 

Current Research

1. Governing Death in China

2. Governing Nature in China: Chinese National Parks (Fenwick Fellow, GMU, 2022-2023)

3. Governing Nature in Taiwan: Decolonizing Formosan Black Bears Conservation in Taiwan (CHR Residential Fellow, GMU, 2024-2025) 

 

Selected Publications

Monograph 

2022. Governing Death, Making Persons: The New Chinese Way of Death. Cornell University Press (Enter 09BCARD in your shopping cart to save 30%!)

Peer-Reviewed Articles

2026.      “Death Workers and Ritual Change: Everyday Politics in the Shanghai Funeral Industry in China,” in Cambridge Handbook of the Anthropology of Death, Ruth Toulson and Sarah Wagner eds. Cambridge University Press. 

2022. “Making a Living from Death: Chinese State Funeral Workers under the Market Economy,” in The New Death: Mortality and Death Care in the 21st Century, Shannon Dawdy and Tamara Kneese ed. New Mexico: SAR and University of New Mexico Press.

2021 "The Civil Governance of Death: The Making of Chinese Political Subjects at the End of Life," in Journal of Asian Studies. 

2020. “Ritual and Pluralism: Religious Variations on Socialist Death Rituals in Urban China,” in Critique of Anthropology. 

2019[2021]. “Market Economy Lives, Socialist Death: Contemporary Commemorations in Urban China,” in Modern China. 

2010 “Substance, Masculinity, and Class: Betel Nut Consumption and Embarrassing Modernity in Taiwan,” in Charismatic Modernity: Popular Culture in Taiwan, Marc L. Moskowitz, ed. Pp.131-148. London and New York: Routledge.

2009 Co-authored (with Joseph Bosco and Matthew West). “Underground Lotteries in China: The Occult Economy and Capitalist Culture,” in Research in Economic Anthropology: Economic Development, Integration, and Morality in Asia and Americas, Vol. 29, Donald C. Wood, ed. Pp.31-62. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing.

Grants and Fellowships

EXTERNAL FELLOWSHIPS AND GRANTS
2017-2019    Early Career Scheme (ECS) Grant, The University Grants Committee, HKSAR

2014             Cora Du Bois Fellowship, Harvard University

2013-2014    Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship

2013-2014    Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, declined  

2010-2012    National Study Abroad Scholarship, Ministry of Education, Republic of China, Taiwan

2007-2008    Fulbright Graduate Study Grant, Fulbright Foundation (Taiwan), declined 

2005-2006    Academia Sinica Masters’ Thesis Writing Scholarship, Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan 

 

INTERNAL FELLOWSHIPS AND GRANTS
2025 SP        Residential Fellow, Center for Humanities (CHR), George Mason University

2024-2025    FRDA Seed Funding Leading to External Funding, CHSS, George Mason University

2022-2023    Fenwick Fellows, University Library, George Mason University

2021             Summer Fellowship, Center for Humanities Research, George Mason University

2019-2020    Start-Up Grant, George Mason University 

2017-2019    Internal Research Support for Successful GRF/ECS Projects, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology 

2015             Initiative Grant, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

2010             Graduate Research Abroad Fellowship, Boston University 

2009-2010    Fellowship, Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs, Boston University 

2009             Summer Research Grant, Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs, Boston University

2008             Summer Research Grant, Anthropology Department, Boston University 

2007-2012    Dean’s Fellowship, Boston University

2006             Travel Grant, the Chinese University of Hong Kong

2004-2006    Postgraduate Fellowship, The Chinese University of Hong Kong 

 

PUBLICATION AWARDS

2010             Award for Excellence (“Underground Lottery” article), Emerald Literati Network 

 

Courses Taught

ANTH 114 Introduction to Cultural Anthropology

ANTH317 East Asian Cultures

ANTH 321 The Cultures of Death ("Death, Dead Bodies, and Culture")

ANTH 330 Non-Western Cultures (Chinese Cultures and Societies)

ANTH 536 Anthropology and the Human Condition: Seminar II

ANTH 635 Regional Ethnography: East Asian Ethnography

ANTH 720 Culture, Power, and Conflict 

Education

2015 PhD, Anthropology Department, Boston University, United States

2006 M.Phil, Anthropology Department, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

2004 M.A., Anthropology Department, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

2001 B.A., Journalism Department, National Chengchi University, Taiwan



Recent Presentations

2025    “Decolonizing Formosan Black Bears in Taiwan,” CHR Residential Fellow Talk, April 30. George Mason University

2025      “Settler Colonialism and the Construction of a New National Totem: Formosan Black Bears in Taiwan,” Feminist Multispecies Ethnographies in Transnational & Global Perspectives Workshop, April 8. George Mason University

2025      “Governing Nature in China: The Emergence of the Chinese National Parks,” Fenwick Fellows Lecture Series, April 8. George Mason University

2024      “Governing Death, Making Persons: The New Chinese Way of Death,” at Global South Hub New Book Panel, March 1, George Mason University. 

2023       “Death Economy, Market Governance, and Market Subjects: An Ethnography of Funeral Professionals in Urban China,” May 24, Sociology Department, Bielefeld University, Germany.

2023      “Commemorating the Dead in Contemporary China: Urban Chinese Death Ritual as a Site of Subject Formation,” for the Invited Panel: Death and Dying in Contemporary East Asia, Asian Forum 2023: Death and Dying in East Asia, May 5-7, Western Michigan University. 

2023      “Governing Death, Making Persons: The New Chinese Way of Death,” March 30, Center for the Study of Contemporary China, Duke Kunshan University. 

2023      “Death Economy, Market Governance, and Market Subjects: An Ethnography of Funeral Professionals in Urban China,” March 20, Anthropology Department, Boston University. 

In the Media

2023      “Governing Death, Making Persons: The New Chinese Way of Death,” New Books Network Podcast, Nov. 10. https://newbooksnetwork.com/governing-death-making-persons

https://medium.com/@rihssmost/學人開講-揭開上海殯葬業的神祕面紗-人類學家的殯儀館田野調查-95435535158e

2023. Samuel Oakford, Lily Kuo, Vic Chiang, Imogen Piper and Lyric Li. Satellite images show Crowds at China’s Crematoriums as Covid Surges, The Washington Post, January 9.

2019. Bennett Marcus. A ‘haunted’ Hong Kong flat: American tenant tries to get to the bottom of some ghostly goings-on. Post Magazine, South China Morning Post, published on 25 May.