Student summer research presentations

Each semester, APSI organizes several events under the banner of our Asia-Pacific Forum. These informal sessions are opportunities for students, faculty, and members of our community to gather and discuss topics of interest, including research projects and opportunities.

At this event, six students will share findings from their summer research: Mariko Azuma; Ruona Qi; Anqi Zheng; Sang Chi Liu; Ting-Yu Cai; and Faye Ma.

Lunch will be provided to registered participants.

Presenters + Abstracts

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Mariko Azuma—“ The Visual Culture of Crafting and Marketing the Modern Japanese Hotel”

This presentation will provide an overview of my summer 2025 research conducted in Japan and in several archival libraries in the U.S. My broader dissertation research focuses on the visual culture of Western-style hotels in late 19th-early 20th century Japan, and how they functioned as central sites from which an ideal Japan could be viewed and experienced. A major angle I include is the productive role of hotel spaces themselves through architecture, interior design, and the exhibitionary inclusion of Japanese art and souvenirs. A key question that guides my research is, “What did the hotel space do, to both individuals and objects embodying the space?” In order to explore this question, my summer research engaged in the role of makers and producers, including artists, that shaped the world of the hotel imaginary. Additionally, my summer research considers the hotel’s broader sphere of influence found throughout adjacent spaces including ocean liner interiors and Japan Tourist Bureau pamphlets and posters.

Ting-Yu Cai—“Governing the Death and the Living: The Transformation of Forensic Science in China From 1880 to 1960”

abstract

This study examines the transnational emergence of forensic medicine in China and Japan from 1880 to the early 20th century, highlighting the dynamic flows of knowledge and institutional practices that shaped this field. Building on the premise that forensic science extended the state’s reach beyond the postmortem realm to regulate life and social order, this research foregrounds the pivotal role of Japanese medical institutions as sites of knowledge production and transmission. My recent archival research at Tokyo University Medical Library, supported by the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute, centered on 解剖学教室関係文書 (Documents Related to the Department of Anatomy) and related collections spanning the Meiji to early Showa periods. This rich archival repository comprises course diaries, microscopic study records, autopsy and forensic case reports, as well as institutional photographs and organizational documents of the Japanese Anatomical Society. These materials reveal how forensic medicine was systematized into a modern scientific discipline within Japan’s medical and legal frameworks. Importantly, the archives illuminate the channels through which Chinese intellectuals, medical students, and government officials—many educated in Japan during this period—acquired, adapted, and reconstituted forensic knowledge. The Japanese forensic methods and institutional models they absorbed played a critical role in informing China’s early modernization of juridical medicine and state governance. By situating these Japanese archival findings within the broader transnational network connecting China and Japan, this research highlights how forensic science functioned as a mobile technology and a medium of state power.

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Faye Ma—“Narrating Political Trauma and Performing Regional Identity in Musical and Oral Practices in Post-COVID Shanghai, China”

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The humanitarian crises caused by the 2022 Shanghai COVID lockdowns are interpreted by many locals as the result of a clash between a more liberal and democratic municipal administration and the CCP regime in their governing styles. Such sentiments among Shanghainese, often coupled with inclinations towards individualism, economic liberalism, and technocracy by western-trained professional class, can be traced to the city’s colonial past and remain a powerful yet often elusive undercurrent in the heavily censored recounting of China’s recent COVID-triggered political crisis.

How may we unpack the relationship between the city’s history, cultural identity, and its residents’ political subjectivity when open discussions of recent political events are largely suppressed? In this presentation, I focus on the musical and oral practices of Mr. He, a Shanghainese socialite and impresario who regularly gives public lectures about his family history through China’s tumultuous 20th century. Through speech analysis of his performative storytelling and thick description of the musical gatherings of his fan community, I show how he ambiguously expresses dissent against the current regime with his creative oral rendering of past events, and how such critiques proliferate as his oral expressions signify, construct, and reinforce a seemingly apolitical regional cultural and class identity among his listeners. By contextualizing his practices in the recent government-led urban regeneration and tourism development efforts, I also begin to unpack the paradoxes in China’s propagandic narrative crafting and individuals' relationship to it.

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Ruona Qi—“Community-Based Strategies for Climate Change Adaptation in Inner Mongolia: Rethinking Vulnerability in Rural Contexts”

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This presentation explores how climate change vulnerability in rural communities is shaped by the interaction of environmental hazards with social, political, and economic factors. Moving beyond static vulnerability indices, it emphasizes process-oriented, community-based approaches that recognize local knowledge, address governance challenges, and confront structural inequalities. By focusing on how adaptation policies can both reduce and inadvertently create new vulnerabilities, the discussion highlights the importance of inclusive, context-sensitive strategies for building resilient livelihoods.

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Siyu Zhang—“Pastoral Margins in Transition: Spatial Reconfigurations and Multispecies Livelihoods in Northern China”

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The Bashang pastoral region, located on the plateau north of Hebei province, China, has long been a semi-pastoral landscape. Since the 2000s, it has experienced dramatic restructuring under state-led projects of village consolidation, land transfers, and renewable energy expansion desired by Beijing Olympics. My fieldwork in a newly resettled village asks: how do people and animals sustain their livelihoods amid shrinking grasslands and unstable wage labor opportunities? I followed villagers, migrants, and herders as they negotiated shrinking grazing lands and shifting opportunities for wage labor. I found that livestock husbandry now functions as a backup livelihood, while conflicts emerge between established herders’ pastures and newcomers. The village itself has become a loose semi-stranger community, reflecting broader demographic and social change. In this talk, I would like to introduce how sustainability country projects reconfigure spatial access, human-animal relations, and the social fabric of rural life, underscoring the pastoral futures at the intersection of modernity and ecological transition.

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Anqi Zheng—“Objects beyond boundaries: Curatorial Practice, Public Memory, and Cultural Heritage in Shanghai Museum”

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The Shanghai Museum, the major local museum in Shanghai, is distinctive in its self-definition as a global art museum rather than a provincial historical museum which prioritize locality. Drawing on its institutional history, curatorial practices, and a controversial incident involving a recently returned porcelain that I encountered during fieldwork, I argue that the museum deliberately seeks to distance itself from locality and nationalism by prioritizing neutral technicality and artistry. Yet this positioning cannot fully shield the institution from political and historical entanglements, particularly when issues of “looted artifacts” evoke collective emotional tensions.