This dissertation presents a computationally-aided analysis of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) use of photojournalism to forge a distinctive socialist media culture from the tumult of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), through the Chinese Civil War (1945–1949), into the early years of the People’s Republic of China (1949–1952). It explores how CCP photojournalists, leveraging diverse media platforms, transformed photographic documentation into potent instruments of Party ideology. The dissertation introduces “digital historical forensics,” a novel digital humanities methodology that combines artificial intelligence technologies—specifically machine learning and computer vision—with traditional humanities approaches, including close reading and contextual analysis. This innovative method sheds light on previously unexamined textual and visual evidence, revealing patterns and strategies in ideological materials. These include the strategic emphasis on human subjects and textual elements, and the deployment of misinformation, influenced by the constraints of print technology and material conditions. The findings uncover unrecorded photographic, editorial, and curatorial decisions, offering new insights into the interplay between textual and visual materiality, power dynamics, and media convergence. It identifies key factors that shaped the CCP’s visual culture, including limited material supplies, military hierarchies, social interactions among cultural workers, and the drive to foster active participation among soldiers and local peasants. The study also highlights how wartime CCP photojournalism not only unveiled issues of social justice but also played a pivotal role in community-building efforts in 20th century China. This dissertation further examines how socialist culture prioritized ethical interactions between photographers and the local populace, enlightening them about their roles and responsibilities within their emerging political identities. Through an analysis of the institutionalization of photojournalism within the Party, this work reveals the genesis of the CCP’s propaganda branch and the development of visual paradigms by newly recruited photographers, which were disseminated among communities in the rural areas of northern China. The fostering of photographic literacy catalyzed the formation of a new generation of photojournalists, engendering a community bound by shared emotions, and facilitating dialogues on empathy and sympathy. By examining the aesthetics, content, production, and circulation of CCP photojournalism, alongside its interaction with various cultural forms, the dissertation elucidates the intermedial and institutional dimensions of state propaganda during a critical period in China’s history.

Engaging with theories of Sinophone studies, national cinema, and transnational cinema, this dissertation centers on ethnic minorities in China to address the dynamic interactions among discourses representing the nation-state, the Han, ethnic minorities, and the rest of the world from 1949 to 1999 through the lens of film. Instead of following the common approach heavily relying on storytelling and narrative studies, I turn to the less-studied non-narrative strategies to scrutinize the functions of opening sequences, props, and set design. I argue that socialist minority films made in the seventeen-year period (1949–1966) cinematically engendered socialist reforms in minority geopolitics, spaces, and bodies; integrated minorities into the Han-centered nation-state; and spread images and social statuses of ethnic minorities that aligned with the national discourse. This dissertation also extends into extra-diegesis to spotlight how ethnic minorities reacted toward their assigned positions, something absent in prior scholarship. By examining minorities’ roles as authors in scriptwriting and actors in film performance during the seventeen-year period, I argue that minorities could maintain limited agency by somewhat negotiating with the national discourse and partly straying from the national interpellation and the constructed personas and identities. Moreover, while prior scholarship generally studies minority films within the context of China, I investigate the transnational and translocal flows of socialist minority films and the adaptations of these films outside the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the 1950s and 1960s. In the transnational and translocal consumption of these films, the socialist discourse embedded within was often deconstructed. In addition, socialist minority films provided a space for non-PRC moviegoers and filmmakers to discuss local geopolitical, social, and identity issues. In the early post-socialist era, a broad spectrum of minority films emerged to challenge the pattern of representation established during the period of high socialism; this new wave was spearheaded by trends of genre hybridization and commercialization of the Chinese film industry. I am therefore studying minority films produced in the 1980s and 1990s to build an argument that the Han filmmakers could use the marginal position of minorities as a weapon to criticize Han-centric notions of national discourse.

How did disco culture, a sexualized and subversive form of late-night entertainment, become a nationalist symbol highlighting “socialist spiritual civilization” during China’s early reform era? Centering on the keywords “remix” and “modernity,” this thesis examines the changing connotations of “disco” as presented in the People’s Daily and investigates two types of disco-based remixed cultural production in the 1980s and 1990s: the song “Xintianyou” and the practice of senior disco. Reflecting on the production and mediation of these two cultural phenomena in post-Mao society, this thesis argues that the recontextualization of disco culture in China reveals the efforts of both the official government and the general public to reconcile nationalism and globalization, as well as politics and entertainment, as the country navigated its way toward modernization amidst cultural dissolution in the late 20th century.

This dissertation investigates different types of immigrant representations in Sinophone cinema, including both inter-Asia representations and relationships with the world. The research analyzes the way in which immigrant cinematic representation intervenes with the issue of national identity in Sinophone communities, primarily during 2000-2020. My primary focus is on the way cinema as a medium represents immigrants, reshapes the imagination about these immigrants, and also the way this process interacts with nation and society. The title of the dissertation “Identities in Motion” reflects the way identities shift in a rapidly changing world. The research explicates our understanding of Asian studies through contemplation of immigrant representations’ mobility and immobility. Seen in this light, I consider not only the heterogeneous aspects of Asia, but also the connections between different locations in Asia and the world.This dissertation focuses on four different immigrant articulations. To place each Sinophone immigrant cinema as a site of complex cultural practices, my dissertation shows how cinema as a medium presents immigrants from different perspectives. Each of these four cases I select has unique contexts but all together posits questions about the concept of nations, identities, and the existing discrimination against immigrant groups. The first chapter examines two films: Ho Wi Ding’s Pinoy Sunday (2009) and Tseng Ying-ting’s Ye-Zai (2012), presenting the groups of “migrant workers” (waiji yigong) in Taiwan. The second chapter examines Cheng Yu-Chieh’s My Little Honey Moon (2012), a film that centers on the subject of new immigrant women which challenges the conventional Xiangtu (nativist) concept. This chapter rethinks Xiangtu in a transnational relationship between Taiwan and Southeast Asia. Chapter three examines Midi Z’s filmmaking, which highlights a special visualization of Sinophone Burma’s landscape in providing precious viewpoints for the world to understand Sinophone Burmese. Chapter four focuses on the spatiality depicted within The Receptionist (2017) and attends to the ways in which this film explores how female immigrants interact with the spatiality as they navigate London. Through the analysis of these films, this dissertation contributes to the developing category of immigrant cinemas and generates an opportunity to rethink the issues of nation, gender, and identities.