Folklore: Material Culture, Folk Art and Crafts, Folklife, Heritage, Museums, Tourism, Oral Narrative, Ethnographic Fieldwork, Chinese Folklore
Lijun Zhang is Assistant Professor of Folklore in George Mason University’s English Department. Her research interests include material culture, heritage (tangible and intangible), museums and curatorship, institutionalization of culture, tourism, oral narrative, and folklore of China and East Asia. She is co-editor of Chinese Folklore Studies Today: Discourse and Practice and Quilts of Southwest China. She co-curated “Putting Baskets to Use in Southwest China” and the international traveling exhibition “Quilts of Southwest China”. She serves as associate editor of the Journal of American Folklore. She conducts ethnographic research regarding folk culture in southeast and southwest China. She is currently working on a monograph on ethnographic research on tulou (rammed earth building) World Heritage site in southeast China and a co-authored book on basketry in southwest China. She teaches courses in folklore and folklife, folklore theory and history, material culture, museums, Chinese folk culture, and folk narrative.
Books
Zhang, Lijun. In press. Living in Heritage: Tulou as Vernacular Architecture, Global Asset, and tourist Destination in Contemporary China. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. [in English] link
Zhang, Lijun and Ziying You, editors. 2019. Chinese Folklore Studies Today: Discourse and Practice. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. [in English] link
MacDowell, Marsha and Lijun Zhang, editors. 2016. Quilts of Southwest China. Nanning: Guangxi People’s Press and distributed by Indiana University Press. [in English and Chinese] link
Articles and Book Chapters
Zhang, Lijun, Jason Baird Jackson, C. Kurt Dewhurst, and Jon Kay. 2022. “Basketry Among Two Peoples of Northern Guangxi, China.” Asian Ethnology 81, no. 1&2: 239-272. [in English]
Jackson, Jason Baird, Lijun Zhang, Wuerxiya. 2021. "Material Culture and Heritage Safeguarding in Southwest China: A Report on a Symposium Organized by the International Folklore Studies Center." Museum Anthropology Review 15, No. 2: 114-121. [in English]
Zhang, Lijun. 2021. “新冠肺炎疫情下的美国公共民俗学实践” [The Practice of Public Folklore in the United States in the Time of the COVID-19 Pandemic.] 民间文化论坛 [Folk Culture Forum.] (2): 5-15. [in Chinese]
Jackson, Jason Baird, Johannes Müske, and Lijun Zhang. 2020. "Innovation, Habitus, and Heritage: Modeling the Careers of Cultural Forms Through Time." Journal of Folklore Research 57, no. 1: 111-36. [in English]
Jason Baird Jackson, Johannes Müske, and Lijun Zhang. 2019. “创新、惯习与遗产：关于文化形式历史发展进程的理论模型” [Innovation, Habitus, and Heritage: Modeling the Careers of Cultural Forms through Time.] 民间文化论坛 [Folk Culture Forum.] 254: 5-15.[in Chinese]
Zhang, Lijun. 2019. “Institutional Practice of Heritage-making: The Transformation of Tulou from Residential Home to UNESCO World Heritage Site” in Chinese Folklore Studies Today: Discourse and Practice. Lijun Zhang and Ziying You, eds. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.[in English]
Zhang, Lijun and Ziying You. 2019. “Introduction: History and Trends of Chinese Folklore Studies” in Chinese Folklore Studies Today: Discourse and Practice. Lijun Zhang and Ziying You, eds. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. [in English]
ENGH 315 Folklore and Folklife
FOLK 560 ENGH 412/590 Folk Narrative: Past & Present
ENGH 412/591 Material Culture and Museums
FOLK 570 ENGH 412/591 Folklore in China
FOLK 550 ENGH 412/591 Folklore and Museums
FOLK 601 ENGH 591 Folklore Theory and History
FOLK 560 ENGH 415/591 Folk Art and Folk Artists
ENGH484 Writing Ethnography
Ph.D in Folklore with a minor in Cultural Anthropology, Indiana University-Bloomington
M.A. in Folklore, Beijing Normal University
B.A. in English Language and Literature, Beijing Normal University
2023. "Basket Crafting Practice and Social Process in Contemporary China." Annual Conference of the American Folklore Society. Portland, Oregon, USA.
2022. “The Differentiation and Dynamic of Basket Making in Southwest China.” Annual Conference of the American Folklore Society. Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA.
2021. “ICH and Community Crafting Practice: The Case of Commercial Basketry in Eastern Guizhou.” Material Culture and Heritage Safeguarding in Southwest China Symposium Organized for the International Folklore Studies Center, Beijing Normal University and Indiana University. (Online)
2021. "Quilts of Southwest China." Textile Talks. (with Marsha MacDowell) (Online)
2020. “The Peoples of Southwest China and Their Traditional Arts.” San Antonio Museum of Art. San Antonio, Texas, USA.(with Jason Baird Jackson) (Online)
2020. “Meta-cultural Awareness and Museumification: The Idealized Representation of Tulou Living Space in Heritage Tourism.” Institute of Folk Literature, School of Chinese Language and Literature, Beijing Normal University. Beijing, China. (Online)
2019. "Baskets in a Baiku Yao Community Today." Annual Conference of the American Anthropology Association. Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
2019. "The Semantics of Safeguarding in the Context of UNESCO and China." Critical Developments in Cultural Sustainability Working Conference. The Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. Washington D.C., USA.
2019. “Institutional Practice of Heritage Making: The Transformation of Tulou From Residential Home to UNESCO World Heritage.” Annual Conference of the American Folklore Society. Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
2019. “Building a Museum Collection of Work Baskets in Northern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.” Annual Conference of the American Folklore Society. Baltimore, Maryland, USA. (with Jason Baird Jackson)
2019. “Collaboration with Community Individuals and Ecomuseums in Ethnographic Research.” The Seventh Forum on China-US Folklore and Intangible Cultural Heritage: Collaborative Work in Museum folklore and Heritage Studies. Indiana University Beijing Gateway, Beijing, China.