Current NYU Shanghai Global Research Initiatives Fellows

Shaoyu Tang
MA Candidate, Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, GSAS
Email:
st3526@nyu.edu

Synopsis of Research in Shanghai (February 3 - March 6)：

Academic works that describes expectations and desires contributes a lot to understanding Chinese new generations’ individual lifestyles, personalities, and desires. However, a lack of ethnographic research gazing into the values and self-evaluation of young people themselves who come of age under Chinese unified national education system still exists. Therefore, Tang proposes to do a master thesis aiming to bridge the represented and visible expectations and aspirations to the values and self-evaluation of Chinese urban youth through interrogating the way they perceive and use the word “success” in daily lives. The expressive meanings of “success” in different contexts (such as schools, family, marital market, media, etc.) to some extent reveal young generations’ imagination of a better life, either accessible or not. Also, besides using by individuals, success is also a word which has been existed so long in Chinese history and is unconsciously connected with middle class anxieties- especially youth and middle age. Shanghai is the second largest city in China and is a proper place for him to conduct interviews with local youth. He would like to take interviews with university students and compare them with students in NYU Shanghai. Also, Shanghai has a really complicated component of population, which provides an ideal field for class and youth study. Tang’s home university (Sichuan University) has good relationships with universities in Shanghai, therefore, they could provide him other help when doing fieldwork in Shanghai. During his time there, there should be Chinese Lunar New Year, which would be a good chance for him to participate in observation in families- he already has informants there.

Xuan Wang
PhD Candidate, Department of Information, Operations, and Management Services, Stern
Email:
xw555@nyu.edu

Synopsis of Research in Shanghai (January 30 – May 22)：

Wang’s dissertation project lies broadly in the fields of supply chain management and optimization. In particular, she will work on process flexibility. Wang tries to investigate the performance of a specific sparse production system configuration relative to the best performance achievable by full flexibility. She will analyze this problem from a distributionally robust optimization perspective - i.e., to quantity the effectiveness of the sparse structure relative to full flexibility without assuming the specific distribution of the product demand. Instead, the only information available is the mean and variance of the random demand, and Wang provides a performance guarantee for the sparse structure against the worst-case scenario.

Kevin Goldstein
PhD Candidate, Department of Comparative Literature, GSAS
Email:
kdg245@nyu.edu

Synopsis of Research in Shanghai (January 18 - April 14)：

Goldstein’s dissertation identifies previously unexamined links between blind writers, visual artists, musicians, and actors, specifically in the context of their thematic treatment of blindness itself. The project centers on the tension between, on the one hand, a tendency toward assimilation and the suppression of difference, and on the other hand, a drive to substantiate a distinct identity and culture via artistic practice. While some artists cease work after going blind, affirming the deeply ingrained complex of vision, knowledge, and creativity, others conceive of blindness as a source of inspiration and affinity with other blind artists, alive and dead. Goldstein argues that this, in part, forms the basis of a multilingual, transnational blind culture. The act of fostering a dialogue both within and without the text, literary or otherwise, becomes a profoundly political gesture. Blindness is not simply a social problem, but a source of identity and of artistic creation. 

 

Meng Wei
PhD Candidate, Department of History, GSAS
Email:
mw1601@nyu.edu

Synopsis of Research in Shanghai (February 13 - May 13)：

Wei’s dissertation focuses on the history of Islam and Muslims in late imperial China. It is a study of the changing social networks among Muslim officials, merchants, and local communities to re-envision the question of the Muslim identity, and to achieve a renewed understanding of the relationship between the state and the Muslims. Wei’s main sources include published and unpublished mosque and tomb stele inscriptions, archival sources, local gazetteers, official histories and biographies, and genealogies.

 

Jingyuan Mo
PhD Candidate, Department of Finance, Stern
Email:
jm3499@nyu.edu

Synopsis of Research in Shanghai (Mar 18 - May 5)：

Mo’s second project is on Chinese business firm groups. Last April, Mo and his advisor visited and discussed in detail the collaboration with their data vendor, Great Wisdom, which is a 10-minute walk from NYUSH. Mo has also applied and received some funding from NYU Stern CGEB PhD grant, which can cover a large portion of the quoted price on Chinese business group data. Since connectedness and structure of Chinese business groups is a largely under-researched area, they believe that this pioneering work will lay a solid foundation for future research on related topics. Next spring, Mo’s adviser will also be in Shanghai to work with him on another recently initiated research project on Chinese government implicit guarantee, another largely under-researched topic.