AAS Call for Proposals

Hello everyone! I am a fourth-year PhD candidate in the Built Environment program at the University of Washington. Together with two fellow graduate students, we are organizing a panel for the AAS 2027  on the transformation of physical and digital urban spaces in contemporary China.

We are seeking one additional panelist, as well as individuals interested in serving as chair or discussant.

Here is a brief introduction to our panel: 

Afterlives of Urban Space: Spatial Transformation in Post-Socialist China

This panel examines how urban spaces in post-socialist China are not simply destroyed or replaced. Instead, they are preserved, reimagined, and remade through governance, cultural representation, memory, and affect.

The three current papers approach these spatial "afterlives" through informal public spaces in urban China, disappearing landscapes in Chinese cinema, and digital reconstructions of vanished environments in online youth culture.

We approach urban spatial transformation as a political, cinematic, and digital practice in everyday life. We aim to explore how state policy, market development, cultural production, and everyday actors negotiate the unresolved promises and disruptions of China's reform era.

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Please feel free to reach out to me via email! 

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Summer Dai
PhD Candidate, Built Environment
University of Washington, Seattle
xuandai@uw.edu
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A quick update: we have found the fourth panelist, but we are still seeking a Chair and a Discussant for our panel. Please feel free to contact me! Here is the updated information about our panel:

Afterlives of Urban Space: Governance, Memory, and Social Reconstruction in Post-socialist China

Rapid urban transformation has reshaped the spaces through which people in post-socialist China experience community, history, and belonging. Yet redevelopment does not simply replace older environments with new ones. Some spaces are preserved and repurposed, while others persist through social relationships, cultural representation, digital reconstruction, and collective memory.

This panel examines the afterlives of urban space across governance, everyday life, cinema, and digital culture. "Afterlives" refers to the ways urban spaces continue to matter after they have changed or disappeared. 

Together, this panel explores what remains when the built environment is preserved, demolished, or radically remade. We approach spatial afterlives not as passive remnants of the past, but as active processes through which people rebuild public life, social relationships, historical aspirations, and collective attachments. Bringing together urban studies, anthropology, film studies, and digital media studies, the panel adopts diverse perspectives to argue that governance and cultural practice jointly shape spaces, organize social life, and influence historical imagination in contemporary China.

 

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Summer Dai
PhD Candidate, Built Environment
University of Washington, Seattle
xuandai@uw.edu
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Final update: We have found our chair, discussant, and the fourth panelist. Thanks for your attention! Hopefully we will meet at AAS 2027!

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Summer Dai
PhD Candidate, Built Environment
University of Washington, Seattle
xuandai@uw.edu
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