EMILY T. YEH
Department of Geography 3035 Folsom St.
CU Boulder Campus Box 260 Boulder, CO 80304
Boulder, Colorado80309-0260 Tel: (303) 447-0629(H)
Email: (303) 492-5438 (O)
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CURRENT POSITION
Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, 2003- present
University of Colorado, Boulder
EDUCATION
PhDUniversity of California, Berkeley 2003
Energy and Resources Group
Dissertation: Taming the Tibetan Landscape:
Chinese Development and the Transformation of Agriculture
MSMIT, Technology and Policy Program 1995
MS MIT, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science 1995
BS MIT, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science 1993
PUBLICATIONS
Peer-reviewed journal articles
“Teaching China’s Environment: Beyond the Three Gorges.” (First author, with Mark Henderson).
Accepted by Teaching About Asia,March 2004 (in press)
“Property relations in Tibet since decollectivization and the question of ‘fuzziness’” Conservation
and Society. Vol. 2 (1):108-131. Spring 2004.
“Tibetan range wars: Spatial politics and authority on the grasslands of Amdo.” Development
and Change. 34(3):1-25. June 2003.
“Validation of urban boundaries derived from global nighttime satellite imagery,” (Mark
Henderson, Emily Yeh, Peng Gong, Christopher Elvidge, and Kimberly Baugh)
International Journal of Remote Sensing. January 2003. Volume 24 (3): 595-609.
“Forest claims, conflicts, and commodification: The political ecology of Tibetan mushroom
-harvesting villages in Yunnan province, China,” The China Quarterly No. 161,
March 2000, pp. 212-226.
Papers under review
“Geographical studies of Tibetan diasporic identities: A call for greater awareness ” Submitted
toSocial and Cultural Geography. March 2004.
“State power and the logic of reform in China’s electricity sector.” (First author, with Joanna Lewis)
Submitted toPacific Affairs, January 2004.
“Hip-hop Tibetans: Racial politics and transnational migrant identities” (First author, with Kunga Lama)
Submitted to Environment & Planning A, May 2004.
“Modernity, memory, and agricultural modernization in Central Tibet, 1950-1980” for Modernity in
Tibet, proceedings of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, edited by Robert Barnett
and Ronald Schwartz, submitted May 2004.
Papers in progress
“Passing, recognition and the transnational formation of Tibetan identities.” Revising for resubmission to Cultural Anthropology.
“Cultivating vegetables/cultivating control: nature and state incorporation on Lhasa’s state farms.”
For submission toComparative Studies in Society and History.
Published conference papers and invited contributions
“Will the real Tibetan please stand up?: Identity politics in the Tibetan diaspora,” in P.
Christiaan Klieger (ed.) Tibet, Self, and the Tibetan Diaspora: voices of difference.
Proceedings of the ninth seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies,
Leiden 2000. Boston: Brill. 2002. pp. 229-254.
"Forest Policies and Perceptions in the Tibet Autonomous Region." Invited contribution to
Mountain People, Forests and Trees: Strategies for Balancing Local Management and
Outside Interests. The Mountain Institute, Mountain Forum, March 2000, pp. 45-46.
Book reviews
Review of Dee Mack Williams, Beyond Great walls: environment, identity and development on
the Chinese grasslands of Inner Mongolia (Stanford University Press, 2002)
Annals of the Association of American Geographers (in press)
Other published work
“Forest Products and Foreign Markets: Community Forestry in NorthwestYunnanProvince.”
Asia Forestry Network, Working Paper SeriesBerkeley, CA 1998.
“Importance of Non-TimberForest Products – Collection and Marketing of Matsutakes in
YunnanProvince.” Forestry and Society Newsletter. Vol.5 No. 2. Institute of Scientific
and Technological Information, ChineseAcademy of Forestry, Beijing, PRC, May 1997.
Five essays on Lhasa neighborhood histories (“Lhaklu,” “Hebalin,” “Lubu,” “Rachu”
and “named groves in historical Lhasa”), Contributions to Lhasa Neighborhoods
Project, Environmental and Cultural Geography collection of Tibet Himalayan Digital
Library.
SELECTED AWARDS AND SUPPORT
PendingMacArthur Foundation Global Security and Sustainability, Research and Writing
Grants ($75,000; applied February 2004)
2004CU Boulder Council on Research and Creative Work, Junior Faculty Development Award ($5000)
CU Boulder Center for Asian Studies, course development travel grant ($5000)
CU Boulder CRCW Small Grants Fund ($600)
2002-2003 Chancellor’s Dissertation Fellowship, UC Berkeley
2000Social Science Research Council, International Dissertation Research Fellowship
(supplementary fieldwork funding)
1999-2002 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) STAR 3 year graduate student fellowship
1999Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowship, UC Berkeley
1997-1998Social Science Research Council, International Predissertation Fellowship Program
1993-95;96-97 National Science Foundation, 3 year graduate student fellowship
TEACHING
Courses Taught
CU Boulder: Geography 4742-02 “Environments and peoples: political ecology” (undergraduate
critical thinking seminar);
Geography 5100-02. “Readings in political ecology – the politics of nature
and the environment” (graduate seminar)
Supervision of independent studies, spring 2004: ethnographic fieldwork methods (grad);
ecological economics (undergrad); political ecology (undergrad)
UC Berkeley: Instructor, grad/undergrad seminar on "China's Environment: History, Policyand
sustainability" (2002); Teaching assistant: "Quantitative Approaches to
global environmental problem solving" (2000)
Student committees
Masters:Brock McCarty (completed), Jessica Lage, Jessica Sherman, Benson Wilder
Doctoral: Meg Tilton (chair)
Ian Feinhandler, Hsien-nu Chang, Vanessa Empinotti, Micheline van Riemsdijk
PROFESSIONAL SERVICE
Reviewer for: China Environment Series, The China Quarterly; chapters in
China's Environment: the Challenges ofSustainable Development, M.E. Sharpe. (edited volume)
Grant proposal reviewer: National Geographic Society, Australian Research Council
Departmental: colloquium committee, 2003-4; member of DART.
Professional memberships: American Association of Geographers; Association for Asian Studies;
International Association for Tibetan Studies; Sigma Xi
Co-facilitator and organizer (with Jean Ku, National Renewable Energy Laboratory) of
“Renewables for sustainable rural development: Programs and Policies” session; 2005 World
Renewable Energy Conference.
Community service: translator/assistance for Tibetan political asylum cases
PRESENTATIONS AND PANELS AT PROFESSIONAL MEETINGS
“From wasteland to wetland?: history and social memory in Lhasa, Tibet.” Presented in panel on “Maps:
Discrepancies between State and local histories of China’s landscape,” American Society of
Environmental History/National Council on Public History joint conference, Victoria, Canada, March 31, 2004.
“ ‘An Open Lhasa Welcomes You’: Disciplining the Researcher in Lhasa’” for panel on “Conducting
International Fieldwork: opportunities, challenges, and lessons” American Association of
Geographers Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, March 16, 2004.
“The politics of social difference among Tibetans in the US and the imagined geographies of homeland”
for panel,“Geographies of transnationalism: the politics of migration.” American Association of
Geographers Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, March 16, 2004.
"Cultivating vegetables/cultivating control: nature, labor and gender on Lhasa’s state farms.”
Panel on "Modern Tibetan History or Modern? Tibetan? History?" Tenth Seminar of
the International Association for Tibetan Studies,Oxford, England. Sept 6-12, 2003.
"The Lhalu wetland nature reserve: land use change and state environmentalism in Lhasa, Tibet."
Presenterand panel organizer for panel on "The construction of Nature reserves in western
China." Association of Asian Studies Annual Meeting. March 27-30, 2003.
"The 'Go West campaign' in Tibet: migration, environment, and state incorporation." Panel on "The
Ecologies of China's 'Go West' Strategy." American Association of Geographers Annual
Meeting. New Orleans, March 5-8, 2003.
“Greenhouse agriculture as a lens on landscape and the politics of place in Tibet.” Panel on “Spatial
aspects of land use and family dynamics in China.” Western Conference of theAssociation of
Asian Studies. Provo, Utah, September 27-28, 2002.
“Gramsci in the Greenhouse: A Hegemony of Tibetan Indolence?” Stanford-Berkeley
Contemporary China Network. UC BerkeleyCenter for Chinese Studies, April 24, 2000.
"Dividing the Tibetan Grasslands: State Strategies of Boundary-Making and their Social and Ecological
Effects in China" Society for Applied Anthropology Conference, San Francisco, March 2000.
“Small-scale Renewable Energy and Sustainable Development on the Tibetan Plateau.”
Presented at the International Symposium on the Qinghai-Xizang (Tibetan) Plateau. Xining,
Qinghai, People's Republic of China, July 20-24 1998.
Invited papers
“An analysis of globalizationand China’s environment: the case of Western China"
University of Montana, 2004 Mansfield Conference: Globalization and China, April 20, 2004.
“Is Lhasa urban?: migration, tourism, and competing Chinese imaginaries of Tibet.” Workshop on
Place Imaginaries,mobilities, and the limits of representation University of New South Wales –
UTS Center forResearch on Provincial China, New South Wales, June 7-9 2004.
Presentations at CU Boulder
“Nature, labor and gender on Lhasa’s state farms in the 1950s.” CU Boulder Center for
Asian Studies, Brown Bag Series, February 12, 2004.
“Preparing for the academic job market” DART/Geography Graduate Teaching Program workshop
March 30, 2004
OVERSEAS FIELD RESEARCH AND WORK
Summer 2002Lhasa, Tibet. Dissertation research; research and documentation
(photography, videotaped oral histories, mapping) for Tibet Himalaya Digital Library
Lhasa Neighborhoods Project.
2000-2001Dissertation research in Lhasa, Tibet Autonomous Region, PRC
Summer 1998China: Qinghai and SichuanProvinces. Social and ecological effects of grassland use right “privatization”; rangeland conflicts and dispute settlement.
July-Aug1997China: YunnanProvince, Diqing Tibet Autonomous Prefecture. Research on harvesting and trade of matsutake mushrooms, with a focus on tenure systems, property disputes, forest management, and market organization.
June 1997Qomolongma (Mt.Everest) Nature Preserve, Tibet. Feasibility study for a
renewable energy project for The Mountain Institute. Included use of
participatory rural assessment in villages to discover local energy needs and
priorities, and technical assessment of feasibility of small-scale solar, hydro, wind
power technologies.
1995-96Program Officer. The AdministrativeCenter for China’s Agenda 21.
Beijing, China. Responsible for developing and revising sustainable development
Project documents, including capacity building projects for UNIDO and UNDP.
Worked on developing indicators for sustainable development in China,
and helped to establish an environmentally sound technology transfer center.
Summer 1994Development Alternatives New Delhi, India. Fieldwork and research comparing
management strategies for community biogas plants; biogas plants as common
property and their role in the rural energy sector.
LANGUAGE SKILLS: Fluent in Tibetan (Central Tibetan dialect) and Chinese (Mandarin)
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