I am a 50% faculty member in Department of Religious Studies and 50% in Department of East Asian Languages & Cultural Studies.

I am a cultural anthropologist interested in the intertwined processes of religiosity, secularization, and state operations in modernity, post-colonial, and Communist conditions. Areas of research and teaching: Chinese religions &  secularization; critical theory; religion and ecology or religious environmentalism, China Studies, sovereignty and state power; gender and feminism; media studies; cultural approaches to political economy.

I specialize in the study of China, with an interest in Sinophone cultures of Taiwan, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia and the West. Although my research is based on fieldwork in contemporary China and Taiwan, it is always informed by a vision of the longue durée of Chinese history, and I seek to reconcile Western critical theory with Chinese philosophy and Chinese empirical findings.

I have assumed teaching, research, and visiting scholar positions at the University of Michigan, University of Chicago, Beijing University, Academia Sinica in Taiwan, Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Center for the Study of World Religion at Harvard University, National University of Singapore, Fudan University, and Institute for the Study of Religious & Ethnic Diversity, Goettingen, Germany. I was Director of Asian Studies at the University of Sydney in Australia 2007-09.

Research:

Publications

• Chinese Environmental Ethics:  Religions, Ontologies, and Practices.  Edited by Mayfair Yang.  Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Co.  2021.
• Re-enchanting Modernity:  Ritual Economy & Society in Wenzhou, China.  Duke University Press, 2020.
• Chinese Religiosities: Afflictions of Modernity and State Formation. Edited by Mayfair Mei-hui Yang. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.
  link to the e-book version, free online: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/3jn4j8cf
• 《礼物,关系学,与国家：中国人际关系与主体性建构》 杨美惠著。 江苏人民出版社，2009 年 (Mainland China public., slightly censored)
• 《禮物,關係學,與國家﹕  中國人際關係與主體性建構》楊美惠著.  台北:  南天書局.  (Taiwan public., uncensored)
• Spaces of Their Own: Women’s Public Sphere in Transnational China. Mayfair Yang, editor. University of Minnesota Press, (1999).
• Gifts, Favors, and Banquets:  the Art of Social Relationships in China. Cornell University Press, (1994). (American Ethnological Society First Book Prize, 1997)

Selected Articles

Other Publications:

Documentaries and Audio Interviews:

Courses Taught

• Religious Environmentalism and Science in the Anthropocene:  Asia and the U.S.  (EACS/Relig Stud 128 undergrad lecture class)
• “Religious Environmentalism in the Anthropocene”  (EACS/Relig Stud 228 grad seminar)
• “Critical Theory” (Relig Stud 200D  grad seminar)
• “Religion, the State, and Modernity in Asia” (EACS/Relig Stud 268 grad seminar)
• “Ethnographic Approaches to the Study of Religious Life” (Relig Stud 292EG)
• “Anthropology of China” (Chin 242; EACS 103A)
• “Chinese Religions: Past and Present” (Relig Stud 125)
• “Problems in the Study of Religion” (Relig Stud 104)
• “Sovereignty & Governmentality” (Relig Stud 273)
• “Anthropology of Religion” (Relig Stud 204)
• “Theory and Method for East Asian Studies” (East Asian 215)
• “Gender & Sexuality in Modern Asia” (East Asian 40)
• “Religious Practices & the State in China” (Relig Stud 183B)
• “Contemporary Issues in Cultural Anthropology” (Anthro 229C)
• “Anthropology of Gender” (Anthro 125)
• Gender & Sexuality in Modern Asia (EACS 40)
• “Anthropology of Media, Gender and Globalization” (Anthro 255)
• “Modernity and East Asia,” (Anthro 154)
• “Anthropology of the State,” (Anthro 216)
• “Religion, Modernity, and Politics” (Anthro 250MY)
• “Elements of Traditional Chinese Culture,” (Anthro 138A)
• “Contemporary Chinese Society.” (Anthro 138B)
• “China Through Film (Anthro 177)