Arts Division
Professor
Faculty
East Asian Studies
Critical Race and Ethnic Studies
Arts Division
History of Art/Visual Culture
Kresge College Academic Building
1209
Communications Bldg
Fall 2024, Mon. 2:45-4pm in person or virtual
Film and Digital Media
Chinese cinema and its transnational connections
early Asian American cinema and theater
Silent and early cinema
Feminist film and media histories; gender studies
Film theory and history
Documentary film and educational film
Trans-socialist film and media
Critical race and ethnic studies
Critical animal studies
Eco-cinema and environmental media
Postcolonial and decolonial studies and practices
2023-2025 Committee on Research Large Project Grant, UC Santa Cruz
Summer 2023 Transcultural Studies Fellowship (Heidelberg University)
2019-2020 NEH (National Endowment for Humanities) Faculty Award for Hispanic-serving Institutions
2019-2020 NEH Mellow Fellowship for Digital Publication (declined)
2019-2020 Arts Research Institute Major Project Grant, UC Santa Cruz
2016-2017 Brown University Howard Foundation Fellowship in Film Studies
Spring 2016 US Studies Centre (University of Sydney) Visiting Scholar Fellowship
Sept. 2014 Donald C. Gallup Fellowship in American Literature, Beinecke Visiting Fellow, Yale U.
2012-2013 UC President’s Faculty Research Fellowship
2011-2012 Hellman Foundation Fellowship
2005-2006 Global Fellowship, UCLA
2003-2005 Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Humanities, Haverford College
Publications
● Monographs
Remaking Chinese Cinema – Through the Prism of Shanghai, Hong Kong and Hollywood (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2013)
To be an Actress: Labor and Performance in Anna May Wong’s Cross-Media World (Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, open access, 2024)
● Journal Articles (Selected):
2024 “People vs. ‘God of Plague’: Socialist China’s Anti-Zoonotic Campaign Media as Environmental Media,” Journal of Environmental Media 4.2: 147-166.
2024 “Sticking with Trans: Reconsidering Chinese American Cinema through Anna May Wong,” Journal of Chinese Cinemas
2023 “Reanimating the Socialist Child--Queerly: The Sideways of a Chinese Animation Nezha naohai” Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 62.3 (Spring): 176-182.
2020 “The Cross-Pacific as Method,” Media Fields Journal (Mar.) (Special Issue: Media Cultures of the Imperial Pacific, edited by Tyler Morgenstern and Xiuhe Zhang)
2019 “Editor’s Introduction Asian Media: Intersections and Interventions,” Feminist Media Histories (Special Issue on Asian Media Histories) 5.1 (2019): 1-10.
2018 “Transnational Media Cultures,” Feminist Media Histories 4.2 (2018): 207-213.
2017 “The Mortal Animal and the Techno-animated life–Chen Qiang’s Experimental Zooetic Animation Trilogy, Cut off,” Journal of Chinese Cinemas (Sept.): 1-17.
2015
• 《家庭肖像和阶级矛盾：重拍姊妹情歌唱片（上）》，见《电影研究》(Film
Studies) (Shanghai), No. 2，pp. 20-33.
• 《歌场魅影》的中国之旅: 好莱坞，上海，香港之魅影电影中的历史与再生》，见《中国比较文学》(Chinese Comparative Literature) (Shanghai), No. 1 (2015): 39-54.
2012 “The Palimpsest Body and the S(h)ifting Border -- On Maggie Cheung’s Two Cross- over Films,” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 20.4 (Fall 2012): 953-981.
2010 “Yongyuan de Xuangong yanshi: ‘xizhuang yueju pian’ yu yixinghua chongpai” (永远 的璇宫艳史: “西装粤语片” 与异性化重拍) (The Love Parade Goes on: “Western Costume Cantonese Opera Film” and Foreignizing Translation), trans. Gong Mengting, in Yingshi wenhua 影视文化 (Cinema & TV Culture) 3 (Nov.): 157-165.
2009
• “Made in China, sold in the United States, and vice versa – transnational ‘Chinese’
cinema between media capitals,” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 3.2: 163 – 176.
• Xiezuo haishi biaoyan，zhe shi ge wenti: Shanghai ershi shiji ersanshi niandai nu yanyuan zuojia ji "xin nuxing" zhi si (写作还是表演，这是个问题：上海二十世纪 二三十年代女演员作家及“新女性”之死) (To Write or to Act, That Is the Question – The 1920s to 30s Shanghai Actress-Writers, and the Death of “New Woman”), Wenyi yanjiu (文艺研究） (Literature and Art Studies) 4: 97-105. Wenyi yanjiu is a key Chinese-language journal dedicated to theory of literature and art.
2008
• “The ‘Transnational’ as Methodology: Transnationalizing Chinese Film Studies through the Example of The Love Parade and Its Chinese Remakes,” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 2.1: 9 -- 21
• “Anna May Wong: A Border-crossing ‘Minor’ Star Mediating Performance,” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 2.2: 91 – 102.
2007 “Screening Asia – Passing, Performative Translation, and Reconfiguration,” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique (special issue entitled “What’s Left of Asia”) 15.2 (Fall): 319 – 343.
2005
• “From the Indexical to the Spectacle – on Zhang Yimou’s Postmodern Turn in Not One
Less,” Journal of Film and Video 57.3 (Fall): 3 -- 13.
• “The Art of ‘Screen Passing’ – Anna May Wong’s ‘Yellow Yellowface’ Performance in the Art Deco Era,” Camera Obscura 20.3: 159 – 191 (referenced in Kim Stanley Robinson’s sci-fi book, Red Moon (2018)
• “The Amateur’s Lightning Rod: DV Documentary in Postsocialist China,” in Film Quarterly 58.4 (Summer): 16 – 26.
● Book Chapters (Selected):
Forthcoming “When ‘Orientals’ Become ‘Indians’: Gender, Race, Masquerade in Frontier Silent Films,” Jon Lewis ed. Oxford Handbook of American Film History.
Forthcoming “Speculating a Speculative History of Early Chinese American Film Culture,” Pam Wojcik, Paula Massood eds. Companion to American Film History.
2024 “When A Cat Flies” in Daisy Yan Du, John Crespi and Yiman Wang eds. Chinese Animation: Multiplicities in Motion (Harvard University Press).
2023 Forward for East Asian Film Remakes, David Scott Diffrient, Kenneth Chan eds. Edinburgh University Press, 2023.
2022 “Chinese Cinema’s Other: Wrangling over ‘China-Humiliating’ Films (ruHua pian),” in Aimee Nayoung Kwon, Takushi Odagiri, Moonim Baek eds. Theorizing Colonial Cinema: Reframing Production, Circulation, and Consumption of Film in Asia (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2022), 92-110 (SCMS (Society for Cinema and Media Studies) 2023 BEST EDITED COLLECTION AWARD).
2021
• “Almost Wild, But Not Quite: The Indexical and the Fantastic Animal Other in China-coproduced (Eco)cinema,” in Andrew Stuckey and Kenneth Chan eds. The Fantastic in Chinese Cinema (Edinburgh University Press), 185-202.
• “Anna May Wong’s Greetings to the World,” in Julia Lee and Josephine Lee eds. Asian American Literature in Transition Volume one: 1850-1930 (Cambridge University Press), 281-301 (Winner, 2022 Choice Outstanding Academic Titles)
• “Tracking Cats and Voicing Dogs: Locating Street Animals in Kedi and Taskafa: Stories of the Street,” in Jaimie Baron, Kristen Fuhs eds. Kedi: A Docalogue (Routledge)
2020 “The Animal and the Animalistic: China’s Late 1950s Socialist Satirical Comedy,” in
Maggie Hennefeld and Nicholas Sammond eds. Abjection Incorporated: Mediating the Politics of Pleasure and Violence (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020), 115-139.
2019 “If Only You Could Only Understand My Language”: Counterfeit Script, Make-believe Translation, and the Actor-Spectator Complicity in The Toll of the Sea (1922), Mr. Wu (1927) and Hollywood Party (1937),” in Nataša Durovicova, Patrice Petro, Lorena Terando eds. At Translation’s Edge (Rutgers University Press), 136-156.
2017
• “From Bumming to Roaming: Xu Tong’s Drifters Trilogy,” in Paul Pickowicz and Yingjin Zhang eds. Filming the Everyday: Independent Documentaries in Twenty-First-Century China (New York: Rowman & Littlefield), 135-152.
• “Acoustic Ladies: Mediating Audiovisual Modernity in Early German and Chinese Talkies,” in Andrew N. Weintraub, Bart Barendregt eds. Vamping the Stage: Female Voices of Asian Modernities (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press), 43-64.
• “ ‘Speaking in a Forked Tongue’: Anna May Wong’s Linguistic Cosmopolitanism,” in Sabrina Qiong Yu and Guy Austin eds. Revisiting Star Studies: Cultures, Themes and Methods (Edinburgh University Press), 65-83.
2016 “Star Talk: Anna May Wong's Scriptural Orientalism and Poly-phonic (Dis-)play,” in Tijana Mamula, Lisa Patti eds. The Multilingual Screen: New Reflections on Cinema and Linguistic Difference (Bloomsbury Academic), 297-315.
2015
• “Playback, Play-forward: Anna May Wong in Double Exposure,” in Katherine Groo and
Paul Flaig eds. New Silent Cinema (Routledge), 106-125.
• “Serial, Sequelae, and Postcolonial Nostalgia–Wong Kar-Wai’s ‘1960s Hong Kong
Trilogy’,” in Martha Nochimson ed. A Companion to Wong Kar-Wai (Wiley-Blackwell), 419-437.
2014
• “Of Animals and Men: Towards a Theory of Docu-ani-mentary,” in Matthew D. Johnson, Luke Vulpiani, Keith B. Wagner and Kiki Tianqi Yu eds. China's iGeneration: Cinema and Moving Image Culture for the Twenty-First Century (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), 167-180.
• “Watching Anna May Wong in Republican China,” In Lisa Funnell, Man-Fung Yip eds.
American and Chinese-Language Cinemas: Examining Cultural Flows (Routledge), 169-185.
• “The Crisscrossed Stare: Protest and Propaganda in China’s Not-so-silent Era,” in Jennifer Bean et. al. eds. Silent Cinema and the Politics of Space (Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP), 186-209.
• “Alter-centering Sinophone Cinema,” A. Yue et. al. eds. Sinophone Cinemas (Palgrave), 26-44.
2013 “Remade in China: Cinema with ‘Chinese Elements” in the Dapian Age,” in Carlos Rojas and Eileen Chow eds. The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas (Oxford UP, 2013), 610-625.
2012
• “Alter-centering Chinese Cinema: the Diasporic Formation,” in Yingjin Zhang ed. A Companion to Chinese Cinema (Wiley-Blackwell), 535-551.
• “Affective Politics and the Legend of Yamaguchi Yoshiko/ Li Xianglan,” in Richard King et. al. eds. Sino-Japanese Transculturation Late Nineteenth Century to the End of the Pacific War (Rowman & Littlefield), 143-166.
2011
• “To Write or to Act, That Is the Question – The 1920s to 30s Shanghai Actress-Writers, and the Death of ‘New Woman’,” in Lingzhen Wang ed. Engendering Cinema: Chinese Women Filmmakers Inside and Outside China (Columbia University Press), 235-254.
• “Wartime Cinema: Reconfiguration and Border Navigation,” in Julian Ward and Song H. Lim eds. The Chinese Cinema Book (British Film Institute), 65-75.
2010
• “‘They Are My Actors’ and ‘I Am One of Them’ -- Performing, Witnessing, and DV Image-making in the Plebian China,” in Chris Berry, Lü Xinyu, and Lisa Rofel eds. The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement: For the Public Record (Hong Kong UP), 217-236.
• “Anna May Wong: Toward Janus-Faced, Border-Crossing, ‘Minor’ Stardom,” in Patrice Petro ed. Idols of Modernity: Movie Stars of the 1920s (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP), 159 – 181.
• “City of Youth, Ocean of Death: Taiyozoku on the Edge of an Island,” in Yomi
Braester and James Tweedie eds. Cinema at the City’s Edge: Film and Urban Networks in East Asia (Hong Kong University Press, 2010), 69-88.
2008 “Remembering a Film and ‘Ruining’ a Film History – on Tian Zhuangzhuang’s Remake of Springtime in a Small Town,” in Christina Lee ed. Violating Time: History, Memory, and Nostalgia in Cinema (New York: Continuum Books), 104-123.
2007 “A Star is Dead; A Legend is Born – Practicing Leslie Cheung’s Posthumous Fandom,” Sean Redmond et. al. eds. Stardom and Celebrity: A Reader (Sage Publications Ltd.), 326-340.
2003 “Crows and Sparrows: Allegory on a Historical Threshold,” in Chris Berry ed. Chinese Films in Focus: 25 New Takes (London: BFI, 2003), 65– 72.
• Audio Commentary:
2022 Commentary on The Death Mask (dir. Thomas Ince 1914) in Kino Lorber’s Cinema’s First Nasty Women (Four-disc DVD/Blu-ray set compiled by Laura Horak, Maggie Hennefeld, and Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi); also contributed to the 120 page booklet
• Collaborative Publications:
2024 Maggie Hennefeld, Laura Horak, and Rachel Loewen, “Feminist World-Making with Cinema’s First Nasty Women,” A Roundtable with Neta Alexander, Kaveh Askari, Rene´e C. Baker, Jennifer Bean, Liza Black, Enrique Moreno Ceballos, Maggie Hennefeld, Laura Horak, Dana Reason, Elif Rongen-Kaynakci, Kate Saccone, Aurore Spiers, Gonca Feride Varol, Yiman Wang, and Bret Wood, Feminist Media Histories 10: 2-3: 114-125
New Book Network interview with Miranda Melcher on monography To Be an Actress: Labor and Performance in Anna May Wong's Cross-Media World (2024)
