Join us for a special guest lecture by Dr. Jing Xu, an anthropologist at the University of Washington, as she presents insights from her latest book, Unruly Children: Historical Fieldnotes and Learning Morality in a Taiwan Village (Cambridge University Press, 2024). This talk explores unpublished fieldnotes from the late anthropologist Arthur Wolf, focusing on children's moral development, disobedience, negotiation, and peer dynamics in a Taiwan village from 1958 to 1960.

Dr. Xu employs an innovative cognitive anthropology approach, integrating ethnographic interpretation, behavioral coding, and social network analysis. This event is an opportunity to engage with themes of morality, learning, and knowledge-making in childhood studies.

Discussion Topics:

• How do humans become moral persons?
• What role does children’s active learning play in contrast to parenting?
• What can children teach us about knowledge-making more broadly?

About the Speaker:
Dr. Jing Xu is a Research Scientist in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Washington. She holds a Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis and has conducted postdoctoral training in developmental psychology. She is the author of The Good Child: Moral Development in a Chinese Preschool (2017) and Unruly Children (2024).

Sponsors:
Sociology & Anthropology Department & Asian Studies, University of Puget Sound

For accessibility questions, please contact 253-879-3931 or email accessibility@pugetsound.edu.

We hope to see you there!