Julie  Y. Chu

Julie Y. Chu is a socio-cultural anthropologist with interests in mobility and migration, economy and value, ritual life, material culture, media and technology, and state regulatory regimes.   She is the author of Cosmologies of Credit: Transnational Mobility and the Politics of Destination in China (Duke University Press, 2010).  Her current project examines border technologies and the various infrastructures in place (legal-rational, financial, cosmic, piratical) for managing the flows of people and things between Southern China and the United States.  A graduate of NYU's Program in Culture and Media, she is also currently completing video projects related to her fieldwork as well as developing a new ethnographic focus on Chinese soundscapes, especially in relation to the changing qualities and valuations of the Chinese concept of "renao" (a bustling scene, social liveliness or literally, "heat and noise").