China Initiative Postdoctoral Research Associate Shanni Zhao is researching how rapid economic, political and societal changes have impacted dating practices and marriage in contemporary China.
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China Initiative
Shanni Zhao
China Initiative Postdoctoral Fellow
Biography
Shanni Zhao is an social and cultural anthropologist. She received her Ph.D. from Anthropology Department at Harvard University with a secondary field in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Her research interests focus on urban governance, state-making, affect and sentiments, public and mediation, marriage and social reproduction, in both contemporary and 20-Century China.
Research
Shanni Zhao’s book project takes state-sponsored matchmaking as a vantage point to study the formation of affective publics in China’s metropolises, and, thereby, the relations between marriage-making and state-making, and between power and attraction.
Publications
“Transgenerational Transmission of Suffering: State Violence, Memory, and Aspiration for Alternative Intimate Lives in Contemporary China.” Ethos: the Journal of the Society for Psychological Anthropology (Berkeley, Calif.), 2023.