Tianhe Chen
267 19th Ave S
Minneapolis,
MN
55455
Tianhe Chen was born in Suzhou, China. He has long been interested in how market-oriented social transformations and differentiations are deeply intertwined with people's everyday struggles and self-identities, especially in how people understand their lives and make expression in an unstable society. His master's thesis focuses on how workers and managers in a state-owned enterprise in southern Jiangsu were involved in and affected by the ownership reform in the late 1990s. He is working on two projects now. The first project is about underdog culture on the Chinese Internet, a loosely connected community usually using "抽象文化" (abstract culture) as the resource of their discourses. This cultural phenomenon can help explore discussion on masculinity, nationalism, class, nostalgia, fairness, solidarity, etc. The second project is about gender and family, which focuses on the interpretations of generational relationships, especially on "原生家庭" (original family or biological family) and "断亲." (disconnection) He is also interested in topics like body/embodiment, language (semiotics), memory, silence, shame, self-destruction, and resistance.
Educational Background
- Bachelor: Public Administration, Peking University, 2013-2017
- Bachelor: Sociology, Peking University, 2015-2017
- Master: Sociology, Peking University, 2018-2021
- Master: Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 2021-2023
Specialties
- Cultural Sociology
- China
- Resistance
- Silence or the Loss of Language
- Computational Methods
- Underdog Culture
- Family
- Online Community
- Inequality
- Memory
- Body
- Gender and Sexuality
- Identification
- Cultural Anthropology
- Qualitative Methods
- Historical Sociology