Huwy-min Lucia Liu

Associate Professor

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

Dr. Huwy-min Lucia Liu received her Ph.D. in Anthropology at Boston University, an MPhil and an MA in Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and a BA in Journalism at National Chengchi University in Taiwan. Prior to joining the faculty at George Mason University, she was a tenure track Assistant Professor in the Humanities Division at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Dr. Liu’s research focuses on social change in authoritarian and socialist regimes. Specifically, she explores how ordinary Chinese people navigate through and respond to structural changes through topics on citizenship, identity, governance, and activism. Her new book, Governing Death, Making Persons: The New Chinese Way of Death is an ethnography of funeral governance, state rituals, and the marketization of the death industry under the Chinese Communist Party, this manuscript explains why and how urban Shanghainese are primarily commemorated in death as model socialist citizens despite the rise of individualism and current government opposition to socialist funerals since the initiation of market reforms in 1978. It illustrates changes in the governance of death and how such changes influence subject formation at the end of life for both the living and the dead with particular emphasis on the effects of market economic reforms.

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: 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

[In Print] “Crying in Contemporary Chinese Funerals: Grief, Value Pluralism, and Emotion Regimes,” in Navigating Moral Crisis, edited by Wilfried Hinsch, Julian Sommerschuh, Susanne Brandtsadter, and Joel Robbins. Berghahn University Press.

[In Print] “From Coffins to Hygienic Boxes,” Chinese Religious Culture in 100 Objects, Adam Chau ed. Oxford University Press.

[In Print] “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 21^st 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 Develop, Integration, and Morality in Asia and Americas, Vol. 29, Donald C. Wood, ed. Pp.31-62. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing.

Book Reviews and Translations

2014 Chinese Translator of “Chinese Religious Philanthropy and the Limitation of Social Capital,” written by Robert Weller, in Anthropology of Religion, Beijing, China.

2010 Co-author (with Charles Lindholm). Book Review of Crying Shame: Metaculture, Modernity and the Exaggerated Death of Lament(James Wilce). Ethos Journal. Vol. 38, Issue 3.

Grants and Fellowships

Dr. Liu has received competitive external research funding via an Early Career Scheme Research Grant from the University Grants Council in Hong Kong (2017-2019), a Cora Du Bois Fellowship from Harvard University (2014), a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship (2013-2014), a Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (2013-2014 declined), a National Study Abroad Scholarship from the Ministry of Education, Republic of China, Taiwan (2010-2012), a Fulbright Graduate Study Grant from the Fulbright Foundation (2007-2008 declined), and Academia Sinica Masters’ Thesis Writing Scholarship from the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan (2005-2006).

Courses Taught

ANTH 114 Introduction to Cultural Anthropology

ANTH317 East Asian Cultures

ANTH312 Political Anthropology

ANTH 321 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

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.