Eric Henry

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and also a member of the Linguistics and Asian Studies Programs. My research describes the linguistic component, particularly in the form of global languages, of China’s ongoing drive to modernize. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the northeastern rustbelt city of Shenyang, I examine language schooling and the attendant style shifts among multiple language codes as attempts by speakers to situate themselves at the forefront of China’s socioeconomic transformations and cultivate transnational subjectivities. I am currently preparing a book manuscript on this topic entitled “The Future Conditional: Building an English-Speaking Society in Northeast China.”