Past Events
This talk is jointly sponsored by Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research (IFH) and Department of History
Details:
Janet Chen is a historian of modern China, specializing in the twentieth century. She received her Ph.D. from Yale University and a B.A. from Williams College. She joined the faculty of the Princeton History Department in 2006, and she is also a member of the East Asian Studies Department.
Professor Chen’s first book, Guilty of Indigence: The Urban Poor in China, 1900-1953 (Princeton University Press, 2012), is a study of the destitute homeless during a time of war and revolution. Focusing on Beijing and Shanghai, the book considers how the advent of workhouses and poorhouses in the early twentieth century represented a fundamental reordering of the relationship between the state, private charity, and the neediest members of society.
A new project underway, provisionally titled The Sounds of Mandarin, will investigate the history of China's spoken national language.