Emily Wilcox

Visiting Assistant Professor of Chinese Studies

Office: Washington 316
Phone: (757) 221-7729
Email: [[eewilcox]]

Research Interests

Emily Wilcox’s primary research interests are twentieth and twenty-first century Chinese and socialist body culture and the anthropology of Chinese performance. Her previous research also examines traditional Chinese medicine as transcultural practice. Emily’s dissertation, entitled The Dialectics of Virtuosity: Dance in the People’s Republic of China 1949-2009, is an ethnographic and historical account of the lives of professional dancers in socialist China. She is currently working on a book manuscript entitled Making Chinese Dance Under Mao, which looks at the epistemological and aesthetic problems of Chineseness in Chinese dance. 

Background

Emily earned her B.A. in Social Anthropology with citation in French language from Harvard University in 2003. In 2004, she received her M.Phil. in History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine from the University of Cambridge (U.K.), and in 2011, she earned her Ph.D. in the Joint Program in Medical Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco. In 2011, Emily served as visiting instructor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Davis, as well as visiting lecturer in Performance Studies at the Shanghai Theater Academy (上海戏剧学院). In 2007-08, Emily studied at the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies at Tsinghua University (清华IUP中文中心), and in 2008-2009 she was a special visiting graduate student at the Beijing Dance Academy (北京舞蹈学院). Emily offers courses in modern Chinese studies, including Chinese popular culture, advanced seminar in Chinese studies, Chinese performance culture, and modern Chinese literature.