Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Chinese and Chinese American Women: Racisms, Feminisms, and Foodways – A Book Talk by Ziying You

Speaker: Ziying You, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Intercultural Studies, University of Georgia

Moderator: Qin Gao, Maurice V. Russell Professor of Social Policy and Social Work Practice, Associate Dean for Doctoral Education, Director of China Center for Social Policy, Columbia School of Social Work

Ziying You explores how Chinese and Chinese American women in the U.S. responded to the dual crises of COVID-19 and anti-Asian racism through foodways, gendered resilience, and community building. Her book draws on ethnography, interviews, media analysis, and personal narratives to highlight women’s agency and identity formation during the pandemic.

Speaker’s Bio: Ziying You is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Intercultural Studies at the University of Georgia. She is the author of Folk Literati, Contested Tradition, and Heritage in Contemporary China (IUP, 2020), co-editor of Chinese Folklore Studies Today (IUP, 2019), and co-editor of the journal special issues “Intangible Cultural Heritage in Asia” (2020) for Asian Ethnology, and “Narratives of COVID-19 in China and the US” (2025) for Narrative Culture.

This event is part of the 2025-2026 lecture series “COVID-19 Governance and Impacts: China from Comparative Perspectives.” The series will be part of the China COVID Project, a multi-institutional, interdisciplinary research initiative funded by the Henry Luce Foundation. It aims to spotlight new empirical and theoretical research that interrogates China’s post-COVID standing through social, economic, political, and gender-based lenses. It features scholars working on governance, public health, digital statecraft, labor, gender, and civil society responses in China and Asia. The series will foster public dialogue and contribute to documentation and analysis of the pandemic’s legacy.

This event is hosted by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and cosponsored by the Columbia China Center for Social Policy.

Registration:

• To attend this event in-person, please register HERE.
• To attend this event online, please register HERE.