Graduate Associate
tislrek[at]my.yorku.ca
Master’s Student
Gradaute Programme in Social Anthropology
Research Keywords:
Cultural consumption; urban space; subject formation; commercialization; shopping mall; China; Shanghai
Research Region(s):
China, East Asia
Research Diaspora(s):
I am an international student from Shanghai, China and a master’s student in the Social Anthropology program at York University. Holding an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from York University, I am interested in anthropological perspectives in general and also in broader themes around power, subject formation, politics of affect, urban space, built environment, capitalism, commercialization and commodification. My current research project concerns with urban youth’s experience of their everyday life encounters with commodified cultural figures (such as copyrighted cartoon figures from Japanese animation) displayed in shopping mall spaces in Shanghai’s west bank central area. I am interested in how these figures, situated simultaneously in a discursive and a material space both shaped by dynamics of power, come to shape youth’s subjectivities through (re)producing and mediating specific experience, imaginations, expectations, and aspirations about the urban and urban life.