Jun Fang

Education

• Ph.D., 2021, Northwestern University
• M.A., 2017, Northwestern University
• M.A., 2014, Beijing Normal University
• B.A., 2010, China University of Geosciences (Beijing)

Areas of Expertise

• Culture and the Arts

• Globalization

• Organizations

• Social Theory

• Qualitative Methods

Personal Information

Jun (Philip) Fang is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Colby College. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from Northwestern University. As a cultural sociologist studying China’s engagement with the West, he broadly addresses how contrasting forces of nationalism and globalization shape processes of creative production, identity construction, and ideological contention. His current book project, When China Meets Hollywood: Global Collaboration and State Intervention in a Creative Industry, is an ethnography of how Chinese conglomerates and Hollywood studios coproduce films from script to screen, exploring the interplay of art, markets, and the state.

His research has been published in the American Sociological Review, Poetics, Qualitative Sociology, SAGE Research Methods Foundations, and elsewhere. He also co-edited a special issue of the Journal of Chinese Sociology on East Asian perspectives on the sociology of the arts and culture. His research has won fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation/American Council of Learned Societies, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, and the University of Chicago Ethnography Incubator. A former columnist, he wrote on culture and education for various media outlets. For more information, please visit his personal website.

Publications

• Fang, Jun. 2024. “The Culture of Censorship: State Intervention and Complicit Creativity in Global Film Production.” American Sociological Review 89(3): 488-517.
• Fang, Jun. 2023. “Globalizing the Sociology of the Arts and Culture: East Asian Perspectives.” Journal of Chinese Sociology 10(8): 1-15.
• Fang, Jun. 2020. “Tensions in Aesthetic Socialization: Negotiating Competence and Differentiation in Chinese Art Test Prep Schools.” Poetics 79.
• Fang, Jun, and Gary Alan Fine. 2020. “Names and Selves: Transnational Identities and Self-Presentation among Elite Chinese International Students.” Qualitative Sociology 43(4): 427-448.
• Fine, Gary Alan, and Jun Fang. 2019. “Idioculture.” In Paul Atkinson, Sara Delamont, Alexandru Cernat, Joseph W. Sakshaug, and Richard A. Williams (eds.), SAGE Research Methods Foundations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
• Fang, Jun. 2018. “The Visual Arts in the Chinese Middle-Class Home: Occupational Status Groups, Abstract Art, and Self-Presentation.” Sociological Studies 5: 66-92.