Department Talk Series: Dr. Huwy-min Liu
Our second Department Talk of the semester will be on Monday, March 20th at 12:30pm in HIS 304. Dr. Huwy-min (Lucia) Liu‘s talk is titled “A Death Economy, market Governance, and Market Subjects: An Ethnography of Funeral Professionals in Urban China”.
One of the most significant changes in death matters occurring in contemporary China has been the institutionalization and professionalization of death. Since China adopted a market economy at the end of the 1970s, state funeral parlors were marketized while remaining a state monopoly. Against this change in political economy, this talk describes and compares two types of funeral professionals. The first was state funeral practitioners employed by funeral parlors and the second was newly emerged private funeral brokers who mediated between the bereaved and funeral parlors.
Dr. Lucia Huwy-min Liu is an alum of our PhD program and is currently Assistant Professor at George Mason University.
We hope to see you all there on March 20th!
