My current research project, Experimental Beijing: Contemporary Art Worlds in China's Capital, examines the social role of visual art and competing ideas of aesthetic, cultural, and market value in reform-era China, with a particular focus on how gender shapes Chinese contemporary art worlds. This research reflects my larger concerns with how various forms of cultural expression--visual and narrative--shape social categories, such as gender, ethnicity, race, national identity, and class; and how these cultural forms are deeply enmeshed in social, political, and economic relations and struggles.