International Network to Expand Regional and Collaborative Teaching (INTERACT) Postdoctoral Fellow 2012-13 at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute
Hsun-hui Tseng received a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Washington, Seattle (2012). She specializes in gender and transnational migration, intimacy, state and market, and the politics of representation with a focus on China, Taiwan and Vietnam. Her teaching interests include women’s migration and trafficking issues, Chinese diasporas, multiculturalism and citizenship, and the politics of body, identity and representation in East Asia.
During her fellowship, she will be working on a book manuscript titled “Stratified Bodies and Geopolitics of Desire: Gender, Class and Race in the Transnational Marriage Market in Taiwan,” which focuses on the market wax and wane of transnational brokered marriages between Taiwanese men and foreign women mainly from China, Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe in the past decade. It examines how “foreign brides” have become a socio-cultural phenomenon, how the value of their racialized bodies has been reflected in the market prices, how men’s and women’s desire is triggered, and how state governments regulate the booming business. In addition, she plans to write a journal article to investigate the cross-strait relationship through looking into the image change of Chinese women in the public sphere of Taiwan from female communists/spies in the 1950s to mainland brides/spouses in the present day. The article attempts to explore how the representation of Chinese women’s bodies reflect the state’s political agendas and common anxiety of Taiwan society about mainland China with the development of the cross-strait relationship.
Email: hsunhui@cuhk.edu.hk
