On the one hand, the past decade has witnessed a massively growing interest in Chinese LGBTQ studies from queer feminists, artists as well as scholars. While on the other hand, despite the fervent academic research, queer feminist movements in the 2020s era are evolving into various forms and adopting new tactics in the face of growing authoritarianism, tightening socio-economic censorship, and a new generation of feminist activism in both China and around the world.
This PhD project focuses on queer communities in a second-tier city H. Using ethnographic fieldwork approach, I seek to understand the following questions: 1) what and how physical spaces are used? 2) what and how activities are organized in the ever-narrowing social spaces allowed in mainland China? And 3) what affects are at play in Chinese queer feminist communities?