Book Talk | Dr. Yuting Wang: Chinese in Dubai: Money, Pride and Soul Searching (November 2020)
Join AUS faculty author Dr. Yuting Wang as she discusses her recent release, Chinese in Dubai: Money, Pride, and Soul Searching (2020). Chinese in Dubai offers the first book-length study of the experiences of overseas Chinese living in the most prominent global city in the Arabian Gulf and the broader Middle East region. Evolving around three themes—money, pride and spirituality—this book delineates the changing shape of Chinese spaces in metropolitan Dubai, and explicates how a frontier mentality affects intergroup relations, identity construction and religious experiences in the Chinese diaspora. It documents how the Chinese make sense of their struggles, sufferings, prosperity and success in relation to Dubai’s fast-changing social environment. This book is a timely endeavor to gauge the implications of a rising China and the shifting patterns of the international economic and political order for the global Chinese diaspora.
Dr. Tim Niblock, Emeritus Professor of Middle East Politics at the University of Exeter and Visiting Professor in the Institute of International and Area Studies at Tsinghua University, Beijing, will be the discussant for the event. Dr. Jeniece Lusk, Assistant Professor of Sociology at AUS, will serve as the moderator for the event.
Venue: Join the book talk through the following Zoom link.
About the Speakers
Author: Dr. Yuting Wang earned her PhD in Sociology from the University of Notre Dame (IN, USA). She is currently Associate Professor in the Department of International Studies at AUS and Non-resident Research Fellow in the Center for Religion and the Global East at Purdue University. She has published widely on the experiences of religious minorities in the United States (Chinese Christians and immigrant Muslims) and China (Chinese Muslims), transnational religious networks, social changes in the Arabian Gulf, Chinese expatriate community in the UAE, and Sino-UAE relations in the era of Belt and Road. She is the author of Between Islam and the American Dream: An Immigrant Muslim Community in Post-9/11 America (Routledge, 2014) and Chinese in Dubai: Money, Pride and Soul-Searching (Brill, 2020). She is currently studying the influx of medical resources from China to the Arabian Gulf region via Dubai, with a particular focus on the connections between religions (Daoism and Islam) and the growing popularity of Chinese medicine in the region.
Discussant: Dr. Tim Niblock is Emeritus Professor of Middle East Politics, University of Exeter, UK, and Visiting Professor in the Institute of International and Area Studies, Tsinghua University, Beijing. From 1999 to 2008, he was Professor of Arab Gulf Studies, University of Exeter. He also served as Director of the Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies at Exeter (1999-2005). Before that, he was Professor of Middle Eastern Studies and Director of the Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at the University of Durham (1993-99). His research interests include the political economy of Arab and Islamic states, with specific attention on the social and political effects of economic liberalization; and the role of Islam in the role of religion in state-building and state-resisting, with particular reference to the Middle East. His initial research and publications on the Gulf and Asia initially focused on the Gulf and China but more recently has encompassed Gulf relations with Asia as a whole. Two articles on this topic have already been published: “China’s Growing Involvement in the Gulf”, and “China’s Intensifying Relationship with Saudi Arabia” (with Norafidah Ismail), in Shen, S, and Blanchard, J-M, Multidimensional Diplomacy of Contemporary China (New York: Lexington Books, 2010).
Moderator: Dr. Jeniece Lusk is an Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Department of International Studies at AUS. Dr. Lusk has taught sociology for over a decade at institutions in the US, Japan and the UAE. Her areas of teaching and academic scholarship include (but are not limited to) survey research methodology, global gender studies, environment and consumption, and deviant behavior. In addition to her academic career, Dr. Lusk has also conducted client-based qualitative and quantitative research and analysis for corporations in Atlanta and Central Texas. Dr. Lusk earned her PhD in Applied Sociology from Baylor University, Texas, USA.
For more information, contact , [email protected].
