Teresa KUAN


Associate Professor


OfficeNAH 325
Office Tel.3943 7728
Emailtkuan@cuhk.edu.hk
Educational qualificationPh.D. University of Southern California

Introduction“To see a world in a grain of sand,” wrote the poet William Blake. It took only one introductory class at UC Berkeley before I declared anthropology as my major, which led to a serious interest in visual anthropology, taking me to the University of Southern California, where I then found myself on the PhD track conducting a project on popular advice and child-rearing in market reform China. My interests are broad, but my research and teaching coalesce around the theme of modernity and subjectivity. I am especially interested in the contingencies of life and the experience of control in relation to large-scale social trends and historical shifts. I have explored this theme in my book?Love’s Uncertainty,?the writing of which has led me to take a strong interest in the issue of “luck” and the distribution of responsibility, specifically, how and why responsibility is taken and under what circumstances. Currently I am following the development of family therapy in mainland China.
Research interestsAnthropology of China, anthropology of ethics, childhood studies, psychological anthropology, medical anthropology.
Geographical areas of researchMainland China
Courses taughtANTH 1020 Anthropology: The Study of Cultures
ANTH 2360/ UGED 2666 Ethics and the Human Experience
ANTH 5010 Anthropological Theory
ANTH 5015 Anthropology: A Postgraduate Introduction
GRF GrantRepairing Relationships: An Ethnographic Study of the Development of Family Therapy in China (2015-2018)
AwardsFaculty of Arts Outstanding Teaching Award 2013
Faculty of Arts Humanities Fellowship 2016
Faculty of Arts Research Excellence Award 2017-2018
Selected PublicationsBooks
2015 Love’s Uncertainty: The Politics and Ethics of Child Rearing in Contemporary China. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
Journal articles ?(a selection)
2021 Vicarious Responsibility and the Problem of ‘Too Much’: Moral Luck from the Perspective of Ordinary Ethics. The Monist. Special issue: Vicarious Responsibility and Circumstantial Luck. 104(2): 168-181.
2020 Feelings Run in the Family: Kin Therapeutics and the Configuration of Cause in China. Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology. Special issue: “It Runs in the Family”. Exploring Contagious Kinship Connections. 85(4): 696–716.
2017 At the Edge of Safety: Moral Experimentation in the Case of Family Therapy.?Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry. Special issue: Moral (and other) laboratories. 41(2): 245-266.
2017 (Co-authored with Lone Gr?n) Introduction to “Moral (and other) laboratories.”?Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry. Special issue: Moral (and other) laboratories. 41(2): 185-201.
2017 The problem of moral luck, anthropologically speaking.?Anthropological Theory?17(1): 30-59.
Book reviews
2018 Review of?The Good Child: Moral Development in a Chinese Preschool.?By Jing Xu. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press (2017).?The China Quarterly?235: 904-905.
2014 Review of?Communities of Complicity: Everyday Ethics in Rural China.?By Hans Steinmüller. New York and Oxford: Berghahn (2013).?Asian Anthropology?13(1): 78-80.
2014 Review of?Chinese Modernity and the Individual Psyche.?Edited by Andrew Kipnis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan (2012).?The China Journal?71: 246-248.
2013 Review of?Young Chinese in Urban China.?By Alex Cockain. New York: Routledge (2012).?The China Journal?69: 230-231.