Digital and Data Humanities Summer Fellowships Cohort Archive

The Art of Life in Chinese Central Asia: A Repertoire of Uyghur and Han Migrant Popular Culture

Following a series of riots in 2009, officials in Xinjiang, an ethnically diverse province in Northwest China, announced multi-million yuan investments in "creative industries" across the region which address official goals of “ethnic harmony” and "anti-terrorism." By centering on Uyghur and Han art collectives, literary salons, film and photography studios that have been created as supplements to secular urban development, this project focuses on the way cultural expression responds to social precariousness across and within ethnic and class divides. Aimed at the intersection of urban studies and expressive culture, this digital project considers how Chinese urban minority and migrant life give rise to new forms of ethics and aesthetics.