Chinese SSSR

Daniel H. Bays is Professor of History and director of the Asian studies program at Calvin College. He earned his B.A. from Stanford University, M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He conducted research in Taiwan as a Fulbright scholar in the 1970s and 1980s, and directed several major projects studying Christianity in China. His numerous publications include Christianity in China, the Eighteenth Century to the Present (Stanford University Press, 1996) and The Foreign Missionary Movement at Home: Explorations in North American Cultural History (University of Alabama Press, 2003). Dr. Bays is a well respected authority of Christianity in modern China.

Deborah S. Davis (Ph.D. Boston University, 1979) is a Professor of Sociology at Yale University. She is currently a member of the National Committee on US China Relations and serves on the editorial boards of The European Journal of East Asian Studies, Social Forces and the new Yale China Health Journal. At Yale she has served as Director of Academic Programs at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization (2001-02), Chair of the Department of Sociology (1992-97), Chair of the Council of East Asian Studies (1991-1992 and 1999-2000), Director of Graduate Studies in East Asian Studies (1984-88) and Sociology (1999-2000). Her publications have analyzed the politics of the Cultural Revolution, Chinese family life, social welfare, class cleavages and occupational mobility. She is currently completing two books: A Home of Their Own, a study of the social consequences of privatization of real estate in Shanghai and Wealth and Poverty in China Today, proceedings from conference held at Yale on how recent Chinese experiences challenge prevailing sociological analysis of inequality and stratification. She also is actively involved in research and advocacy work in response to the AIDS epidemic in China.

Richard Madsen is Professor and Chair of the department of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. He received an MA in Asian studies and a Ph. D. in sociology from Harvard. He is the author, or co-author of eleven books on Chinese culture, American culture, and international relations. He has also written scholarly articles on how to compare cultures and how to facilitate dialogue among them. His best known works on American culture are those written with Robert Bellah, William Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven Tipton: Habits of the Heart (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1995) and The Good Society (New York, Knopf, 1991). These books explore and criticize the culture of individualism and the institutions that sustain it. Habits of the Heart won the LA Times Book Award and was jury nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. His books on China include Chen Village under Mao and Deng (co-author with Anita Chan and Jonathan Unger) (Berkeley, UC Press, 1992), Morality and Power in a Chinese Village (UC Press, 1984) [winner of the C. Wright Mills Award], Unofficial China (co-edited with Perry Link and Paul Pickowicz) (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989), China and the American Dream (UC Press, 1994), China’s Catholics: Tragedy and Hope in an Emerging Civil Society (UC Press, 1998), and Popular China: Unofficial Culture in a Globalizing Society, co-edited with Perry Link and Pickowicz (Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002). Books on social theory include: Meaning and Modernity, co-edited with William Sullivan, Ann Swidler, Steven Tipton (UC Press, 2002) and The Many and the One: Religious and Secular Perspectives on Ethical Pluralism in the Modern World (Princeton University Press, 2003).

Robert P. Weller holds a Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University, is Professor of Anthropology and Research Associate at the Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs at Boston University. He has written numerous books and articles on Chinese political, social, and cultural change. The most recent book is an edited volume called Civil Life, Globalization, and Political Change in Asia: Organizing Between Family and State (Routledge). His newest book, Discovering Nature: Globalization and Environmental Culture in China and Taiwan (Cambridge) should be available in January 2006.

Gao Shining is a professor at the Institute of World Religions, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. She received her BA in English Language and literature from Guizhou Teachers' University in 1981, MA in Sociology of Religion from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 1988. Professor Gao has been a visiting scholar or visiting professor at the University of Toronto, Canada, 1992–1993, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2000-2001, the University of Aarhus, Denmark, 2002, and the University of Birmingham, UK, 2005. She is the author or co-author of The Marxist Idea of Religion and Its Relevant Trends, Contemporary New Religions, Sociology of Religion, An Exploration of New Religions and over 30 articles about the sociology of religion and Christian Studies. She has also translated more than ten academic books in the same fields.

Li Xiang-ping is Professor and Director of the Center for Religious & Social Research at Shanghai University, and Vice Dean of Shanghai University Library. He received his Ph.D. in Chinese History from East China Normal University. He has been a visiting scholar or visiting professor at the Theology School of Boston University, Yokohama Municipal University in Japan, and Buddhism Research Institute, Taisho University in Japan. His numerous publications on history and sociology of religion in China. He has directed several research projects, including “Christianity and Buddhism in Coastal Areas of Modern China,” “Modern Chinese Society and Its Conflict with Traditions of Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism,” and “Theoretical Trends of Thoughts of Contemporary Sociology of Religions in The United States.”

Wei Dedong is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Renmin University of China, Beijing, specializing in Buddhist philosophy and empirical research on religion in China. He earned his BA in Philosophy from Nankai University, his MA and Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies at Renmin University. He has published numerous articles in scholarly journals on Buddhism, sociology of religion, and philosophy of religion. He is the editor of the Chinese Journal of the Social Scientific Study of Religion.

Chiu Hei-yuan (瞿海源)
Ph.D. in Sociology Indiana University
-Research Fellow, Institute of Sociology Academia Sinica
-Professor, Dept. of Sociology, NTU
President, Taiwanese Sociological Association
Sociology
-Social Psychology
-Social and political
-Analysis of Religious change in Taiwan

About the Sociology of Religion Program Department of Sociology and Anthropology Religious Studies Program Asian Studies Program College of Liberal Arts