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Fang Xu

Ph.D., CUNY

Office Hours

Spring 2024

Thursdays 1-3pm, 269 Evans Hall by appointment only. Please email Prof. Xu to for the sign up link to schedule an office hours appointment.

Fang Xu is an urban sociologist with expertise in language, cultural identity, and public policies in urban China. Her other research interests lie in urban studies, consumption, nationalism, and migration.

Dr. Xu currently works on a research project that investigates linguistic assimilation and linguistic discrimination experienced by first generation immigrants whose mother language is not English, and their opinions on the notion, “Be American, Speak English.”

Publications

Book: 2021. Silencing Shanghai: Language and Identity in Urban China. Lexington Books.

Articles and Book Chapters:

2024. Aceska, A., Doughty, K., Tiryaki, M. E., Robinson, K., Tisnikar, E., & Xu, F. (2024). Doing sonic urban ethnography: Voices from Shanghai, Berlin and London. Urban Studies.
https://doi-org.libproxy.berkeley.edu/10.1177/00420980231223866

2022. “Honorary Shanghairen or Forever Waidiren: Vernacular, Social Integration, and the Ambiguity of local identity (永远的外地人还是名义上的上海人: 语言批判、社会阶层和地方身份的模糊性).” Journal of Shanghai Normal University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition). 51(05): 126-36.

2021. Sept. “How to Study the Linguistic Landscape of a Chinese Megametropolis.” Field Research Methods Lab, London School of Economics.

2020. “Chapter 11: Only Shanghainese Can Understand:Popularity of Vernacular Performance and Shanghainese Identity,” in Revealing/Reveiling Shanghai: Cultural Representations from the 20th and 21st Centuries. (Eds.) Lisa Bernstein and Chu-chueh Cheng. State University of New York (SUNY) Press.

2020. co-authored with Yunpeng Zhang, “Ignorance, Orientalism and Sinophobia in Knowledge Production on COVID-19.” Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie (Journal of Economic and Social Geography). Volume 111, Issue 3: 211-223.

2020. “Pudong is not My Shanghai:Displacement, place-identity, and right to the city in urban China.”  City & Community. Volume 19, Issue 2:330-351.  

2018. “Take Me Shopping: Hands-on Learning Experience in a Consumer Society and Culture Course.” Advertising & Society Quarterly. Volume 19, Issue 3.

2013. “Chapter 9: Governance on the Production of Identity: Consuming Western High-Culture in Contemporary Shanghai.” in China and the Humanities: At the Crossroads of the Human and the Humane. (Ed). Kang Tchou. Melbourne: Common Ground Publishing. Pp. 161-88. Earlier version appearing in The International Journal of the Humanities, 2009, Vol.7, No.5:19-32.

Book Reviews

2022. Book Review of The Future Conditional:The Future Conditional: Building an English-Speaking Society in Northeast China. Asian Ethnology 81(1&2): 334-35.

2022. Book Review of The Evolution of the Chinese Internet: Creative Visibility in the Digital PublicContemporary Sociology  51(3):204-206.

2017. “What is in an Asian Gene?” Book Review of Aihwa Ong’s Fungible Life: Experiment in the Asian city of life. International Institute for Asian Studies Newsletter.

2017. Book Review of Rojas, Carlos and Ralph A. Litzinger’s Ghost Protocol: Development and Displacement in Global China. Journal of International and Global Studies. Volume 8, Number 2:97-9.

2016. Book Review of Valerie Imbruces From Farm to Canal Street: Chinatowns Alternative Food Network in the Global Marketplace. Food, Culture and Society. Volume 19(4): 737-38.

2016. Book Review of Goodman, D. S. G. (ed.) The New Rich in China: Future Rulers, Present Lives. Journal of International and Global Studies. Volume 8, Number 1:81-4.

2014. “Transnational Architectural Production with Chinese Characteristics.” Book Review of Xuefei Ren’s Building Globalization:Transnational Architecture Production in Urban China. Sociological Forum. Volume 29, Number 2:511-15.

2013. Book Review of Jill M. Bystydzienski’s Intercultural Couples: Crossing Boundaries, Negotiating Difference. Social Problems Forum. Volume 44, Issue 3:10-1.

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