Guangtian Ha
Biographic Data
| ID | 314662 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Guangtian Ha |
| GIVEN NAMES | Guangtian |
| FAMILY NAME | Ha |
| SIGNATURE | HA G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Haverford College |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0837-4061 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 13 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Islam and Asia: A History By Chiara Formichi
White Camphor and Peppercorn Hair: Blackness in Medieval Arabo-Asia
Reading classical Arabic and Chinese sources at once comparatively and intersectionally, this article initiates an investigation of Black labor—specifically Black sailors and slaves—employed in medieval trade networks that connect Africa, Arabia, and Persia to South Asia, Southeast Asia, and China. It does not presume a homogeneous definition of Blackness, nor a generalized notion of slavery. While informed by concepts developed in scholarly stud…
Translingual Islam: The Perso-Arabic Cosmopolis in China
This article uncovers the hitherto lesser-known histories of the Perso-Arabic cosmopolis as exists among China’s Sinophone Muslims. Drawing on reprinted manuscripts and published secondary literature in Arabic, Persian, and Chinese, I show a continual evolution of this cosmopolis as it articulates with Chinese through rigorous works of translation, transliteration, and a more encompassing mode of translingual conversion. This linguistic feat is e…
Sensing the Sinophone: Urban Memoryscapes in Contemporary Fiction
Modern cities are odd beings, and each modern nation has its fair share of such oddities, each with its own eccentric touch. The city of Zhengzhou, in China's central Henan Province, has named its streets to put on public display its dogged preoccupation with politics. The paramilitary-guarded Henan provincial government sits at the city's geometric heart; from this ground zero emanate roads and streets each bearing a moniker as dull as the next:…
The Sound of Salvation: Voice, Gender, and the Sufi Mediascape in China
The Jahriyya Sufis—a primarily Sinophone order in northwest China—inhabit a unique religious soundscape. The first ethnography of this order in any language, The Sound of Salvation draws on nearly a decade of fieldwork to reveal the intricacies and importance of Jahriyya vocal recitation
The War on the Uyghurs: China’s Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minority. By Sean R. Roberts
Ethnographies of Islam in China
Specters of Qingzhen: Marking Islam in China
Based on fieldwork in Henan and Ningxia conducted in numerous research trips each lasting from two weeks to two years from 2010 to 2018, this article argues that in the two decades from the late 1990s to the late 2010s, there was a critical transition in how halal food was marked in China and how the state as well as ordinary Muslims perceived these shifting signs. By explaining the difference between qingzhen and halal signs, and by highlighting…
Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Scripture, and Language in Han Kitab
Kristian Petersen’s new book is an excellent addition to the growing body of literature on the Sinophone Hui Muslims in imperial China. It shows with great clarity how a group of Hui intellectuals
Empire of Sound
The Silent Hat: Islam, Female Labor, and the Political Economy of the Headscarf Debate
What is the point of revisiting Muslim women’s head wears when such a topic has already been extensively discussed in recent years? What can we do with the spectres of class and labour that often appear, however fleetingly, in these discussions that nonetheless take secularism and the public sphere as the organizing concepts? Based upon fourteen months of fieldwork in northwest China, this article examines the intricate connection between rural H…
Dialectic of embodiment: Mysticism, materiality and the performance of Sufism in China
This article attempts to contribute to the study of religious – particularly Sufi Islamic – structuring of the body from two perspectives: on the one hand, it pays attention not merely to the disciplinary dimension of the Jahriyya Sufi training in northwest China, but also to the specific processes that build this training around the corporeal acts of ritual consumption. On the other hand, this article also examines how the structuring of embodim…
Sociality of losing? Speculations on the Beijing Olympics and emergent forms of Chinese capitalism
Instead of directly confronting the Beijing Olympics, this paper is interested in the broader theatrical conjuncture in which the drama of ‘Olympics’ is put on stage. This conjuncture is tentatively named ‘sociality of losing’. Moving across a story that apparently presents the familiar significance of descendants for the Chinese mind, this essay starts by reading beyond the common anthropological assumption regarding Chinese kinship and proposes…
Olympian Ghosts: Apprehensions and Apparitions of the Beijing Spectacle
Choosing not to follow the more popular approach of addressing the Beijing Olympics by critical attention to the political, economic, historical or even ideological meaning of the Olympics to China, this article situates the 2008 Beijing Olympics in the fragmentary everyday life of contemporary Chinese people. The grand spectacle of the Olympics is dissolved into the rumours and stories which reveal the deep sense of fear, anxiety, ungroundedness…
Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Scripture, and Language in Han Kitab
Kristian Petersen’s new book is an excellent addition to the growing body of literature on the Sinophone Hui Muslims in imperial China. It shows with great clarity how a group of Hui intellectuals
Specters of Qingzhen: Marking Islam in China
Based on fieldwork in Henan and Ningxia conducted in numerous research trips each lasting from two weeks to two years from 2010 to 2018, this article argues that in the two decades from the late 1990s to the late 2010s, there was a critical transition in how halal food was marked in China and how the state as well as ordinary Muslims perceived these shifting signs. By explaining the difference between qingzhen and halal signs, and by highlighting…
The Silent Hat: Islam, Female Labor, and the Political Economy of the Headscarf Debate
What is the point of revisiting Muslim women’s head wears when such a topic has already been extensively discussed in recent years? What can we do with the spectres of class and labour that often appear, however fleetingly, in these discussions that nonetheless take secularism and the public sphere as the organizing concepts? Based upon fourteen months of fieldwork in northwest China, this article examines the intricate connection between rural H…
Olympian Ghosts: Apprehensions and Apparitions of the Beijing Spectacle
Choosing not to follow the more popular approach of addressing the Beijing Olympics by critical attention to the political, economic, historical or even ideological meaning of the Olympics to China, this article situates the 2008 Beijing Olympics in the fragmentary everyday life of contemporary Chinese people. The grand spectacle of the Olympics is dissolved into the rumours and stories which reveal the deep sense of fear, anxiety, ungroundedness…
Olympian Ghosts: Apprehensions and Apparitions of the Beijing Spectacle
Choosing not to follow the more popular approach of addressing the Beijing Olympics by critical attention to the political, economic, historical or even ideological meaning of the Olympics to China, this article situates the 2008 Beijing Olympics in the fragmentary everyday life of contemporary Chinese people. The grand spectacle of the Olympics is dissolved into the rumours and stories which reveal the deep sense of fear, anxiety, ungroundedness…
Sociality of losing? Speculations on the Beijing Olympics and emergent forms of Chinese capitalism
Instead of directly confronting the Beijing Olympics, this paper is interested in the broader theatrical conjuncture in which the drama of ‘Olympics’ is put on stage. This conjuncture is tentatively named ‘sociality of losing’. Moving across a story that apparently presents the familiar significance of descendants for the Chinese mind, this essay starts by reading beyond the common anthropological assumption regarding Chinese kinship and proposes…
Dialectic of embodiment: Mysticism, materiality and the performance of Sufism in China
This article attempts to contribute to the study of religious – particularly Sufi Islamic – structuring of the body from two perspectives: on the one hand, it pays attention not merely to the disciplinary dimension of the Jahriyya Sufi training in northwest China, but also to the specific processes that build this training around the corporeal acts of ritual consumption. On the other hand, this article also examines how the structuring of embodim…
Empire of Sound
The Silent Hat: Islam, Female Labor, and the Political Economy of the Headscarf Debate
What is the point of revisiting Muslim women’s head wears when such a topic has already been extensively discussed in recent years? What can we do with the spectres of class and labour that often appear, however fleetingly, in these discussions that nonetheless take secularism and the public sphere as the organizing concepts? Based upon fourteen months of fieldwork in northwest China, this article examines the intricate connection between rural H…
Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Scripture, and Language in Han Kitab
Kristian Petersen’s new book is an excellent addition to the growing body of literature on the Sinophone Hui Muslims in imperial China. It shows with great clarity how a group of Hui intellectuals
Specters of Qingzhen: Marking Islam in China
Based on fieldwork in Henan and Ningxia conducted in numerous research trips each lasting from two weeks to two years from 2010 to 2018, this article argues that in the two decades from the late 1990s to the late 2010s, there was a critical transition in how halal food was marked in China and how the state as well as ordinary Muslims perceived these shifting signs. By explaining the difference between qingzhen and halal signs, and by highlighting…
Ethnographies of Islam in China
The Sound of Salvation: Voice, Gender, and the Sufi Mediascape in China
The Jahriyya Sufis—a primarily Sinophone order in northwest China—inhabit a unique religious soundscape. The first ethnography of this order in any language, The Sound of Salvation draws on nearly a decade of fieldwork to reveal the intricacies and importance of Jahriyya vocal recitation
The War on the Uyghurs: China’s Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minority. By Sean R. Roberts
Sensing the Sinophone: Urban Memoryscapes in Contemporary Fiction
Modern cities are odd beings, and each modern nation has its fair share of such oddities, each with its own eccentric touch. The city of Zhengzhou, in China's central Henan Province, has named its streets to put on public display its dogged preoccupation with politics. The paramilitary-guarded Henan provincial government sits at the city's geometric heart; from this ground zero emanate roads and streets each bearing a moniker as dull as the next:…
Translingual Islam: The Perso-Arabic Cosmopolis in China
This article uncovers the hitherto lesser-known histories of the Perso-Arabic cosmopolis as exists among China’s Sinophone Muslims. Drawing on reprinted manuscripts and published secondary literature in Arabic, Persian, and Chinese, I show a continual evolution of this cosmopolis as it articulates with Chinese through rigorous works of translation, transliteration, and a more encompassing mode of translingual conversion. This linguistic feat is e…
White Camphor and Peppercorn Hair: Blackness in Medieval Arabo-Asia
Reading classical Arabic and Chinese sources at once comparatively and intersectionally, this article initiates an investigation of Black labor—specifically Black sailors and slaves—employed in medieval trade networks that connect Africa, Arabia, and Persia to South Asia, Southeast Asia, and China. It does not presume a homogeneous definition of Blackness, nor a generalized notion of slavery. While informed by concepts developed in scholarly stud…
Islam and Asia: A History By Chiara Formichi
History (11 works) · China (9 works) · China's Ethnic Minorities and Relations (7 works) · Asian Studies and History (6 works) · Chinese history and philosophy (6 works) · Islam (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Political science (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Archaeology (5 works)