About
Research Interests:
I am a scholar of modern Asian cultural studies and performance, with a focus on Chinese dance and theater in transnational perspective. As an interdisciplinary researcher, I work across the fields of modern Chinese studies, dance and performance studies, and transnational cultural studies. My research has been funded by grants and fellowships from the Fulbright Program, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Social Science Research Council. I have also been a long-term visiting scholar at leading arts institutions in China, including the Beijing Dance Academy and the Shanghai Theater Academy. I am the author of twenty published and forthcoming academic articles and essays, and I regularly give lectures, teach, and write internationally in both English and Chinese. A complete list of my publications can be found here.
Current Projects:
My first monograph, Revolutionary Bodies: Chinese Dance and the Socialist Legacy, is currently under contract with the University of California Press. Grounding dance within Chinese and transnational cultural history, it analyzes the work of major Chinese choreographers from 1935 to 2015 to offer the first primary source-based account of the history of concert dance in the People’s Republic of China. The book challenges the previously held view that Soviet ballet was the primary transnational force shaping China’s socialist dance creation, instead showing the impact of a broader range of intercultural connections, from Trinidad and London to North Korea and Uzbekistan. The book shows the important role that ethnic minority and diaspora artists played in the construction of China’s national dance forms during the socialist era. It also demonstrates continuities and changes that have occurred in Chinese dance creation from the socialist period to the twenty-first century. Using previously unexamined film footage, a wide range of Chinese-language published and archival materials, and ethnographic research, Revolutionary Bodies uncovers the dynamic history of socialist dance experiments that laid the basis for Chinese dance, a contemporary concert dance genre widely practiced in China and around the world.
Apart from Revolutionary Bodies, I am also currently working on a collection titled Corporeal Politics: Dancing East Asia, co-edited with Katherine Mezur and including contributions from eighteen international scholars. In this book, we examine the moving body as a medium of artistic experimentation, cultural exchange, and political activism in China, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Spanning in historical reach from late imperial times to the present and bringing together leading scholars from Asia, Europe, and North America, this book offers the first in-depth study of dance as a critical cultural practice across the East Asia region.
Finally, I have begun work on a second monograph, tentatively titled Choreographing Asia: Women Dancers, Convergent Transnationalisms, and Cultural Exchange. This project examines a group of border-crossing women dancers of Asian descent and their work around the world from the 1930s to the 1960s. Focusing on relationships among gender, ethnicity, race, and place, it uses the method of transnational biography to show how the lives and art of these influential Asian women transcended national and ethnic boundaries and made important contributions to the formation of twentieth-century anti-colonial global dance modernisms.
Other Activities:
Since coming to U-M in 2013, I have led several projects designed to make the U-M an international center for research in the emerging field of Asian dance studies. Between 2014 and 2018, I organized eight short and long-term residencies that brought visiting dance artists and scholars from Asia to offer workshops, performances, and lectures for students and the broader U-M community. In collaboration with the U-M Asia Library, I developed the “Pioneers of Chinese Dance Digital Archive,” a digital humanities resource containing over 1,500 digitized rare and historical photographs. In 2017, I also co-curated the exhibit “Chinese Dance: National Movements in a Revolutionary Age, 1945-1965” and organized the U-M Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies Annual Conference “Dancing East Asia: Critical Choreographies and Their Corporeal Politics” that brought together scholars of East Asian dance studies from Asia, Europe, and North America. I have served in national leadership positions as President of the Association for Asian Performance and a Board Member in the Society of Dance History Scholars, and I currently serve on international editorial and advisory committees in China, Singapore, and South Korea.
Teaching Interests:
I teach undergraduate and graduate courses and advise graduate research in the fields of modern Chinese studies, Asian studies, and performance studies. Graduate seminars I am teaching currently include “Rethinking China After 1949: New Approaches in PRC Cultural Studies” and “Critical Studies in Asian Performance: Indonesia and China.” A complete list of my past and current courses can be found here. Apart from the PhD in Asian Languages and Cultures, I also advise students in the MA in China Studies and the Graduate Certificate in World Performance Studies. I welcome inquiries from prospective graduate students interested in any of these programs.
