Princeton University

Janet Chen is an assistant professor who specializes in modern Chinese history.  Her research focuses on urban poverty and social change in the twentieth century. Professor Chen’s dissertation examined changing patterns of social welfare and the impact on the lives of the urban poor from 1900 to 1949.  She is currently finishing a book based on the dissertation.  In 2006, she joined the faculty of the Princeton History Department, and she is also a member of the East Asian Studies Department.  

Professor Chen was born in Taiwan and grew up in Mission Viejo, California.  She received her Ph.D. from Yale University and a B.A. from Williams College.  Professor Chen has received several awards and fellowships, including the Prize Fellowship from the Council on East Asian Studies, a Fulbright for study in China, and the A. Bartlett Giamatti Fellowship from Yale.  

Professor Chen is currently working on her book, titled Guilty of Indigence.  It focuses on the lives of the urban underclass during a period of deepening social dislocation, and traces the evolution of poor relief practices as attitudes toward indigence and dependency changed.  She has also begun research on a new project which will investigate the creation of Mandarin as a “national language” in China and Taiwan.  

Professor Chen teaches undergraduate courses on modern China and East Asia, and graduate courses on twentieth-century China. 
 

Guilty of Indigence: The Urban Poor in China, 1900 to 1951, book manuscript.
“Between Heaven and Hell: Subei during the Chinese Civil War, 1946-1949,” article manuscript.