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Last Updated: Thursday, August 27th, 2020 at 7:01 PM
Associate Professor
My research interests include Chinese cinema and history, East Asian cinema and history, aesthetics, art history, and theory. My first book, Memory, Subjectivity and Independent Chinese Cinema, was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2014. I am currently working on my second book project on space, aesthetics, and history in East Asian cinema from the 1950s on. My articles appear in Asian Cinema, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, positions: asia critique and so on. I also (co-)curated the 2008 REEL CHINA Documentary Biennial (New York and Shanghai) and the 2011 Independent Chinese Cinema series at High Museum (Atlanta).
Memory, Subjectivity and Independent Chinese Cinema (Edinburgh University Press, 2014) provides a historically informed examination of independent moving image works made between 1990 and 2010 in China. Showcasing an evolving personal mode of narrating memory, documenting reality, and inscribing subjectivity in over sixteen selected works that range from narrative film and documentary to experimental video and digital media (even including a multimedia avant-garde play), this book presents a provocative portrait of the independent filmmakers as a peculiarly pained yet active group of historical subjects of the transitional, post-socialist era. Through a connected investigation of cultural and cinematic concepts including historical consciousness, personal memory, narrative, performance, subjectivity, spatiality, and the body, Wang weaves a critical narrative of the formation of a unique post-socialist cultural consciousness that enables independent cinema and media to become a highly significant and effective conduit for historical thinking in contemporary China.
Covering directors such as Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Jia Zhangke, Jiang Wen, Lou Ye, Meng Jinghui, Wang Bing, Wang Guangli, Duan Jinchuan, Cui Zi'en, Shi Tou, and Tang Danhong, this book is essential reading for all students and scholars in Chinese film.