Virgil Kit-yiu HO (何傑堯) DPhil Oxford University, 1995



Tel: 23587802

Email: hmvihoky@ust.hk

Room No: 3349

Full CV

Professor Ho received his BA in History from the University of Hong Kong. As a John Swire/Cathay Pacific Scholar, he continued his postgraduate studies at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University, where he also earned his Master of Studies Degree in Chinese Studies. From fall 1989 until spring 1994, he was a Research Fellow at University of Gothenburg’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology in Sweden.
 

Research Interests

Social and cultural history of modern China; rural South China in the Republican and the early-Socialist periods; political cultures and political symbolisms in modern China. 

Representative Publications

“Images of Houses, Houses of Images: Some Preliminary Thought on a Socio-cultural History of Urban Dwellings in Pre-1940s Canton”, in Christian Henriot and Wen-hsin Yeh eds, Visualizing China (Leiden: J. Brill, 2012)

Understanding Canton: Rethinking Popular Culture in Republican Period. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

“What is Wrong With Capital Punishment? Official and Unofficial Attitudes Toward Capital Punishment in Modern and Contemporary China.” In The Cultural Lives of Capital Punishment, ed. by Austin Sarat and Christian Boulanger. 274-290. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005.

“Martyrs or Ghosts? A Short Cultural History of a Tomb in Revolutionary Canton, 1911-1970.” East Asian History 27 (June 2004): 99-138.

“‘To Laugh at a Penniless Man Rather than a Prostitute’: The Unofficial Worlds of Prostitution in Late Qing and Early Republican South China.” European Journal of East Asian Studies 1.1 (2001): 103-137.

Cantonese Society in a Time of Change. (co-authored with Göran Aijmer) Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2001.

“Butchering Fish and Executing Criminals: Public Executions and the Meanings of Violence in Late-Imperial and Modern China.” In Meanings of Violence: Symbolism and Structure in Violent Practice, ed. by Göran Aijmer and J. Abbink. 23 pages. Oxford: The Berg Publishers, 2000.

“Whose Bodies? Taming Contemporary Prostitutes’ Bodies in Official Chinese Rhetoric.” China Information (Leiden: Universiteit Leiden) 13.2/3 (Autumn/Winter 1998): 14-35.

“Cantonese Opera in a Rural Setting: Observations on Village Drama.” In Images and Enactments: Possible Worlds in Dramatic Performances, ed. by Göran Aijmer and Åsa Boholm. 113-134. Gothenburg: The Institute for Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology, 1994.

“Selling Smile in Canton: Prostitution in the Early Republican Canton.” East Asian History (Canberra: Australian National University) 5 (June 1993): 101-132.

“The Limits of Hatred: Popular Cantonese Attitudes Towards the West in the 1920s and the Early 1930s.” East Asian History (Canberra: Australian National University) 2 (December 1991): 87-104.