Janet Chen is a professor of history and East Asian studies at Princeton University, where she has taught courses on modern China and East Asia since 2006. Her books include Guilty of Indigence: The Urban Poor in China, 1900–1953, a study of the destitute homeless during a time of war and revolution, and The Sounds of Mandarin: Learning to Speak a National Language in China and Taiwan, 1913–1960, a social history of how people learned to speak Mandarin.