Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Film and Television

Abstract: "This dissertation aims to shed light on how Asian American actors deal with constraints within film, television, and theatre. Narratives from veteran and aspiring Asian American actors provide insights into how this minority is coping with shifts in opportunities and attitudes in casting for films, television and theatre."

Abstract: "This dissertation examines the first six U.S. feature films of Iranian-American director Ramin Bahrani in order to explore key connections between various industrially independent production modes and the aesthetic and ideological qualities of the films. Bahrani’s films are divided into three distinct periods based on the production mode in which he was working at the time, here characterized as microbudget, guerilla-style independent, Indiewood, and digital streaming productions. Each chapter explores the production mode in question, including production histories of the relevant films, and then discusses key connections arising between production strategies, aesthetics, and the films’ ideological and historical import."

Abstract: "This dissertation examines the ideological function of comedy and the strategies of comic racial representation--what I will be generally referring to as "race play". From the vast body of Asian American studies literature, we know that the prevalent stereotypes of Asians as foreign, grotesque, monstrous, and deviant have instigated many legal, social, and political anti-Asian actions. These "controlling images" are "generated by the dominant group to help justify the economic exploitation and social oppression of Asian American men and women over time" (Espiritu 87). And while these stereotypes often lead to tragic consequences like legal and social exclusion and bodily harm, the stereotypes themselves are often not solemn representations of Asians but comical ones. How comedy, particularly comical cultural representations, operates as an oppressive ideological discourse that has restricted the life choices of Asian Americans is one of the central concerns of this dissertation. The other is how and why Asian Americans are utilizing strategies of comic representation to negotiate, contest, and even reproduce the stereotypes imposed on them."

Abstract: "The goal of this dissertation is to bring the scholarship on South Asian American media representation up to date with the changes in the media industry. I argue that the number of shows, films, and other multimedia content centered on the second generation South Asian American experience warrants a new framework of study that looks beyond the narrow lens of stereotypes grounding most previous research on this topic. I articulate this framework as a genre of South Asian American Second Generation Media (SGM). Drawing from canonical and more current texts of genre studies, I conceive of this genre as the result of new industry practices and technologies, changes in the way South Asian American stories are told on screen, emergent themes in this body of content, and increased audience participation in the articulation of second generation South Asian American media representation."

Abstract: "This dissertation explores the connections between Chinese body cultures and transnational screen cultures by tracing the Chinese body through representation in contemporary cinema and media in the post-Mao era. Images of Chinese bodies participate in the audio-visual manufacture of desire and pleasure, and ideas of “Chinese-ness” endure through repetitive, mediated performance. This dissertation examines how representations of sex, health, and beauty are mediated by social, cultural, and political belief systems, and how cine/televisual depictions of the body also, in turn, mediate gender, cultural, racial and ethnic identifications within and across national boundaries."