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AP Forum: East Asian Studies MA Thesis Presentations—Spring 2025
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Speaker
East Asian Studies MA candidates
During this in-person forum, graduating students from the MA in East Asian Studies program will present their culminating work.
Kenan Gu
From “Fangzhi 防治” to “Fangzhi 防止”: The Politics and Logic of Prevention in AIDS Intervention and Everyday Lives of Gay and MSM Community in China
Abstract:
This thesis examines how epidemic governance and queer subjectivities intersect in contemporary China, focusing on the historical development and everyday effects of the country’s “prevention-first” HIV/AIDS intervention policy. It combines socio-historical analysis of epidemic control policies with ethnographic research on how these policies shape the lives of gay and MSM (men who have sex with men) individuals, a population that is both central to state intervention and sociopolitical imaginations of the epidemic but marginalized in everyday life.
This study asks three key questions: (1) What historical, sociopolitical, and cultural conditions and contingencies have shaped China’s “prevention-first” approach to AIDS intervention? (2) How do state-led HIV/AIDS policies impact the organizing efforts and lived experiences of gay and MSM individuals? and (3) How do these individuals navigate the contradictions of surveillance, pathologization, and empowerment under AIDS intervention policies and politics?
Using textual and discourse analysis alongside ethnographic fieldwork—including participant observation and targeted interviews in a gay and MSM community-based organization in Xi’an—this thesis makes two main arguments. First, it traces the changes and continuities of China’s HIV/AIDS policies over the past three decades, showing how both the centering of gay and MSM population in the politics of epidemic visibility and the making of “prevention-first” approach involve historical contingencies and local contexts. Second, this project argues that the pervasive logic of prevention extends beyond the domains of state public health and official sociopolitical narratives. It has become embedded in the mundane operations of the organization and the everyday lived experiences of gay and MSM community members through a range of disciplinary, campaign, and advocacy techniques. Prevention, in this sense, is not merely a public health measure but a structuring force that materializes through multiple channels, reinforcing itself as a central framework for shaping the actions, belonging, desires and anxieties of gay and MSM individuals around the organization-centered community.
By examining the entanglement of bio/necropolitics, epidemic governance, citizenship and queer organizing and sociality, this thesis explores how prevention-first operates as both a regulatory tool and an everyday reality, reshaping the ways queer communities experience health governance in contemporary China.
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Chenyi Huang
Maternal Figures in South Korean Cinema: A Comparative Analysis of Mother and Poetry
Abstract:
This paper examines motherhood in Mother (2009) and Poetry (2010), exploring maternal roles, societal constructs, and cinematic techniques. Mother portrays selflessness entangled with possessiveness, challenging maternal instinct, while Poetry depicts a quest for understanding amid societal pressures. Both films present complex maternal figures navigating sacrifice, guilt, and identity. Through comparative analysis, this study uncovers themes of mother-child relationships, societal paradoxes, and resistance to patriarchy. Mother and Poetry transcend cinema, urging reflection on motherhood’s complexities and societal expectations, revealing the intricate dynamics of maternal love, identity, and societal influence.
Playfulness in Digital China
Abstract:
This paper examines playfulness as a critical force in digital China, building on Paola Voci’s concept of “lightness” while shifting the focus to interaction and subversion. Playfulness, as an intrinsic disposition, fosters participatory culture, enabling ambivalence, resistance, and engagement beyond rigid institutional structures. Through cases like Furong Jiejie, CMG New Year’s Gala and He Sui Pian (Chinese New Year movies) , this study explores how playfulness challenges cultural hierarchies, social norms, and political authority. It argues that playfulness, despite its non-consequential nature, holds subversive potential, reshaping public discourse and fostering creative expression in China’s evolving digital landscape.
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Hechen Liu
Beyond Cycles of Extraction: Rethinking Development and Decline in Fushun’s Late Industrial Landscape
Abstract:
Fushun, once a cornerstone of China’s coal industry, is now frequently framed as a textbook case of resource exhaustion and urban decline. Particularly, its West Open-Pit Mine—the largest throughout Asia—has long shaped the city’s socio-economic landscape. However, rather than viewing Fushun through the conventional boom-and-bust narrative, my thesis argues that the city’s transformation should be understand as ongoing processes of spatial reconfiguration and redevelopment. The depletion of coal reserves and the dwindling coal industry have not led to a straightforward decline but have instead opened avenues for new forms of vertically integrated re-industrialization, real estate speculation, and ecological infrastructure projects that continue to reshape both the city and its inhabitants.
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and archival research, my thesis challenges the linear temporal framework that ties Fushun’s fate to the life cycle of its extractive industries. By examining demographic shifts, corporate restructuring, and urban redevelopment led by state-owned enterprises (SOEs), I explore how different social groups—former miners, technocratic elites, and young people—navigate the uncertainties of economic transformation. While some benefit from new industrial and financial investments, many others face increasing precarity that is shaped by intergenerational accumulation of socio-economic instability. My thesis thus reveals the uneven distribution of prosperity and hardship at a critical moment when Fushun is emerging as a post-industrial frontier, where new forms of governance and citizenship are being negotiated.
Ultimately, my thesis questions whether decline is an inevitable consequence of resource depletion or a constructed narrative that shapes governance, labor dynamics, and urban renewal. In doing so, I reframe Fushun not as a city in decline but as a contested site where the boundaries between development and stagnation remain fluid, and where extractive economies persist in evolving and unexpected forms.
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Zoey Liu
Hayarigami, or Fleeting Deities: Narrating the Unknown in Two Japanese Urban Legends
Abstract:
This thesis examines Japanese urban legends as a cultural phenomenon and a modern folklore genre that narrates the unknown in various ways. While urban legend studies have been extensively explored in American and European contexts, research on Japanese urban legends remains underdeveloped in global scholarship. This study addresses this gap by analyzing how these narratives interact with themes of modernity, digital culture, and folklore traditions in Japan.
To investigate this issue, the thesis employs a multidisciplinary approach, incorporating folklore studies, narratology, and cultural analysis. The primary materials selected for case analyses are two well-known Japanese urban legends: “Kotoribako” (コトリバコ) and “Kisaragi Eki” (きさらぎ駅). The methodology involves textual analysis of these narratives alongside theoretical frameworks such as Freud’s concept of the uncanny, the narratological notion of frame narratives, and the study of netlore as digital folklore. The research also considers the interactive nature of internet-based storytelling and its role in shaping urban legends.
This thesis examines the connotations of the “unknown” in two Japanese urban legends. “Kotoribako” highlights the fear of contamination between urban modernity and rural superstition, while “Kisaragi Eki” reflects anxieties about technological incomprehensibility. The unknown is both unsettling and enticing, as it suggests a possibility of expanding the existing knowledge system. Whether through scientific explanations or mythological reinterpretations, urban legends help stabilize modern anxieties. The thesis ends with an outlook on future research on urban legends regarding their narratives, external influences, and commercialization.
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Ziqi Wan
What Were the True Demands of the “Blank Paper” Protests? Not Revolutionary, Mostly Moderate
Abstract:
The Blank Paper Protests of 2022 were widely seen as a major act of resistance in China, but this thesis argues they were not a revolutionary movement. Instead, they reflected public frustration with the arbitrary enforcement of Zero-COVID policies rather than a fundamental challenge to state authority. Protesters sought practical policy adjustments rather than systemic political change. This thesis adopts a three-pronged approach: informal conversations with community officials in Wuhan and Shanghai reveal how pandemic enforcement was decentralized to the lowest levels; a self-compiled dataset of 226 protest incidents maps protest patterns and grievances; and 2021 to 2022 Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) data contextualizes broader public sentiment. Findings show that while dissatisfaction with Zero-COVID measures was widespread, trust in the central government remained intact. The protests dissipated once policies changed, indicating a demand for governance reform rather than regime change. This thesis situates the movement within China’s crisis management strategies, illustrating the limits of public compliance when state narratives diverge from lived experience.
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David Zong
The Historization and Problematization of “Ikigai” in Rural Japan: A Critical Examination of Cultural Essentialism
Abstract:
In popular media and self-help literature, ikigai—often translated as “life’s purpose”—is frequently packaged as a uniquely Japanese formula for fulfillment. Yet these portrayals risk oversimplifying a concept that emerges from diverse historical contexts and social realities. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in rural communities of Aichi and Gifu Prefectures, this talk critically examines how ikigai is (re)constructed and contested among older adults navigating a rapidly aging society. By tracing ikigai’s historical evolution—from its ties to Japan’s prewar ie (family) system to its postwar transformation amidst urban migration—we uncover how state discourses, commodification in tourism, and Western “therapy culture” each reinforce reductive cultural-essentialist narratives.
Rather than viewing ikigai as a static essence of “Japaneseness,” this research foregrounds the agency of rural seniors, who creatively redefine ikigai to sustain both personal and communal well-being under shifting social and economic pressures. In doing so, it reveals a more dynamic landscape, where ikigai is a site of negotiation, resistance, and care rather than a fixed cultural trait. Ultimately, this presentation challenges the essentialist lens through which non-Western concepts like ikigai are often commodified and urges a more critical, historically grounded understanding of how meaning is made in everyday life.