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APSI students celebrate milestones in Spring 2026

It’s the most wonderful time of the year—depending on whom you ask. At APSI, the spring semester is filled with events, courses, activities, and milestone presentations. Students pursuing an MA in East Asian Studies are given the option to either write an MA thesis or revise and submit two research papers originally developed during coursework to satisfy milestone requirements for the degree.

This year, nine soon-to-graduate students successfully defended their projects over 11 days (March 20–31). Snapshots from these academic highlight events are provided below.

They also each shared a brief summary of their work during a public forum on March 30. We are proud of their achievements and look forward to celebrating their graduation in May.

Professor Eileen Cheng-yin Chow, APSI's director of graduate studies, kindly shared some of her reflections about each of the students’ milestone projects:

Anqi Zheng’s wide-ranging thesis on women as curatorial subjects (rather than as objects or passive consumers) spans the Northern Song Dynasty to the end of the Republican era, and uses art historical, literary, and social historical frameworks to make her argument.

On the other end of the time scale, Lingxiang Sun, Lilia Yan, Jia’er Liu, and Daniel Zhang’s thesis projects all focus on the contemporary moment in East Asia, each deploying extensive fieldwork and participant observation. Yet they deeply and differently engage with theories of cultural anthropology, sociology, gender, digital media studies, and fan studies to unique ends in each of their studies. Their theses also draw on their advanced linguistic and cultural skills in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Moreover, Lingxiang and Lilia’s research projects are insistently transnational and cross-regional: recognizing that the contemporary digital media studies and fan studies landscape cannot be understood within one geopolitical or linguistic framework.

On the other hand, Leo Lyu (who chose the two-research-paper option) and Siyu Zhang both embraced the single locality and long durée mode of historical and socio-anthropological study. They both chose to deep dive into minute shifts in landscapes of care, education, and social relations in PRC China over a longer span of time. Siyu Zhang’s thesis, in particular, is a rich and detailed examination of decades of policy interactions between the central government and one particular locality, Bashang Village, where Siyu engaged in extensive ethnographic fieldwork, collecting interviews, policy documents, and redistricting plans, to render a fuller picture of the place.

Finally, two thoughtful works of literary history whose scopes exceed the borders of the nation-state were produced by Meilin Long and Jiayang Cai. Meilin analyzed 1949 cross-strait Sinophone refugee memoirs as both bildungsroman and acts of therapeutic reparation, while Jiayang traced the tensions and contradictions inherent in post-war Japanese writers publishing in the internationalist Anglophone literary magazine Lotus – and the manner in which editorial juxtaposition produced meaning far beyond intended ideological or nationalist frameworks.

Our graduates are now headed into various fields of work and study: doctoral programs, independent research, jobs in creative, tech, and marketing industries; Meilin and Leo have even joined forces to start their own game design studio – with their first game launching later this summer! So proud of all of them.

Explore snapshots from their thesis defenses:

Four people taking a selfie in front of a painted portrait — *pictured l–r: Jiayang Cai, with committee members Eileen Chow, Kimberly Hassel, Nayoung Aimee Kwon*

Jiayang Cai
Fiction, Friction: A Sengoha Encounter in Lotus

Four people standing in a group — *Jia'er Liu (second from left) with committee members Kimberly Hassel, Anne Allison, Carlos Rojas (l–r)*

Jia'er Liu
Under the Influence: Visibility, Interpretation, and Embodied Pleasure in Contemporary Chinese Heels Dance

Four people in a selfie — *Meilin Long (second from right) with committee members Nayoung Aimee Kwon, Eileen Chow, and Guo-Juin Hong (l–r)*

Meilin Long
Divergent Memories of the “Refugee Student”: Trauma, Politics, and Identity in the Memoirs of Chi Pang-yuan and Wang Dingjun

Four people smiling at the camera — *Leo Lyu (second from right) with committee members Nayoung Aimee Kwon, Ralph Litzinger, and Eileen Chow (l–r)*

Leo Lyu
On Schoolyard Tearfests and a Digital Hospice in China

Four people taking a selfie — *Lingxiang Sun (second from right) with committee members Eileen Chow, Kimberly Hassel, and Hae-Young Kim (l–r)*

Lingxiang Sun
Gambling for Love: Chinese Women's Engagement in K-pop Fandom

Lilia Yining Yan
Love by Commission: Performing Intimacy in Chinese Otome Game Fandom

Four people pose in front of a screen where a fifth person's image is projected — *Siyu Zhang (second from left) with committee members Engseng Ho, Prasenjit Duara, and Bai Gao (l–r); onscreen: committee member Yi Wu)*

Siyu Zhang
In the Wake of Resettlement: Reconfigurations of Space, Order, and Sociality in a Bashang Village

Four people stand together — *Daniel Xuyang Zhang (second from left) with committee members Kimberly Hassel, Anne Allison, and Carlos Rojas (l–r)*

Daniel Xuyang Zhang
Negotiating Wanghuang: Chinese Gay Men’s Pornographic Practices on X

Four people stand in a group; three hold cards — *Anqi Zheng (second from right) with committee members Nicole Elizabeth Barnes, Eileen Chow, and Prasenjit Duara (l–r)*

Anqi Zheng
Claiming Li Qingzhao’s Legacy in Modern China: Women’s Participation in Chinese Collecting Culture from 1800-1950