TAPS/EALC
I am a PhD student in the joint program of East Asian Languages & Cultures and Theatre & Performance Studies at the University of Chicago. I work on performance, gender, aesthetics, and media, rethinking masculinity, embodiment, and theatrical agency in late-imperial Chinese drama and their modern afterlives. Trained in the young male lead role type in the all-female Yue opera and Kun opera from a young age, I always strive to bring to light the voices of performers and produce original insights.
My other interests include political philosophy and ethics, ancient philosophy, Honglou meng studies, early Shanghai left-wing and Mao-era cinema, revolutionary culture, East Asian popular music, posthuman visions, and others.
I frequently organize events and work with artists and public venues to promote traditional Chinese performing arts. I am the recipient of the 2024 UChicagoGRAD Furthering Diversity Leadership Award.
Publications
Book Review of Casey Schoenberger’s Music, Mind, and Language in Chinese Poetry and Performance: The Voice Extended, Critical Inquiry, 2026.
“Flowing Like Water: Materiality, the Body in Motion, and Female Subjectivity in Mei Lanfang’s Art of Water Sleeves,” The Dancing Goddess: Mei Lanfang in America, ed. Cathrine Yeh. China Institute, 2026.
“Becoming Awakened: Opera, Gender, and Intertextuality in Xie Jin’s Film Two Stage Sisters (1964)” CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature 42, no. 2 (2023): 130-164.
Translation of Judith Zeitlin’s Opera Quarterly article “Operatic Ghosts on Screen: The Case of A Test of Love (1958)” [戏曲电影中的女鬼: 以越剧电影《 情探》 为例] in Xiju Yishu《戏剧艺术》, no.4, 32-46, 2024.
Kaixuan Yao’s report of “100 Years of China’s All-Female Yue Opera” in CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature 43, no. 2 (2024): 217-224. (a landmark conference I organized that marked the first time the all-female Chinese opera genre was commemorated in a concentrated, multimedia manner that connected academic and practitioner perspectives outside China)