DR. WANG JIABAO

Trained in Cultural Studies, I am a researcher engaging in interdisciplinary research on culture. My research is primarily concerned with the cultural history of modern and contemporary China through the lens of ‘folk’ or minjian. In particular, I am interested in how ‘folk’ has been discursively constructed by the state and intellectuals throughout the 20th century, and how it continues to be represented at heritage sites, folk art museums, folk art fairs, as well as contemporary art exhibitions in the 21st century. My interdisciplinary PhD training in Cultural Studies in Asia at the National University of Singapore has taught me to be a questioner, committed to promoting critical and creative thinking as a mode of living beyond academia.

Being a practitioner of critical pedagogy, I always problematize preconceived ideas that have shaped our understandings of the world. As a lecturer, I believe that classroom is where knowledge is produced and challenged through productive dialogues between teachers and students. Besides teaching in the classroom, I am also an active listener keen on translating students’ personal experience and knowledge into discussion materials. Critical discussion could help students reflect upon how our perception of the world is sociologically constructed. Students are not passive learners but knowledge producers. My role as a teacher is to acknowledge students’ opinions as knowledge and situate their knowledge within a larger socio-political, economic, and cultural contexts so as to allow them to scrutinize their common sense.

I am currently not available for PhD supervisions. 

Selected Master and PhD projects under my solo supervision: 

Art and cultural history:

1. Revolution, Modernity and Historical Narrative: Pictorial Stories in the People's Republic of China (Yang Yuxiang, PhD, graduated)
2. Women’s Art Exhibitions in Contemporary China: Gender as Identity, Experience, and Strategy (Yu Lulu, PhD, ongoing)
3. The Transformation of Cyberpunk in the Chinese Context after the 1990s (Li Lei, PhD, ongoing)
4. Art Education as Pragmatic Vocation: The Influence of the Shanghai Fine Arts College on Henan Modern Art Education in Early Twentieth-Century China (Liu Jie, PhD, ongoing) 
5. Between the Peripheral and the Heroic: The Transformation of Characters in Contemporary Chinese Adventure Comics After the Mid-1990s (Zou Wenyi, PhD, ongoing)
6. R for Rumah, R for Resistance: Artistic Transcript of Shooshie Sulaiman's Selected Installation Works (Nur Aqilah Binti Zulkhairy, Master Mixed Mode, graduated)
7. Conflicting Narratives: Problematics in Malays(ian) Art Historiography (Chung Li, Master Mixed Mode, graduated)  
8. Secular Yet Sacred: De-religionizing Nuosu Bimo Paintings in Contemporary China (Qumu Zhiyin, Master Mixed Mode, ongoing)

Popular and visual culture:

1. A New Representation of the Patriarch in Chinese Cinema: A Case Study of the Animated Film Nezha: Birth of the Demon Child (2019) (Li Ruiqi, Master Mixed Mode, graduated)
2. From Funv to Nvshen: The Changing Discourse of Women in Advertising Videos for Women's Day on Jingdong (Li Yichen, Master Mixed Mode, graduated) 
3. The Discursive Construction of Chinese Male and Female Celebrities in Sisters Who Make Waves and Call Me by Fire (Wang, Jingyun, Master Mixed Mode, graduated)
4. The Construction of Soft Nationalism through Audiences’ Online Comments on The Outcast (Ma Sai, Master Mixed Mode, graduated)
5. Ain't We Women: The (In)visibility of Black Women's Oppression in Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale (Gracious Yoong Chen Xin, Master Mixed Mode, graduated)
6. Redefining Kinship through the Representation of Duanqin Culture in Douyin Micro-dramas (Sun Jialiang, Master Mixed Mode, graduating)
7. When Death Heals: The Role of Death in Realist-Themed Chinese Healing Film Lighting Up the Stars (2022) and All Ears (2023) (Liu Xingchen, Master Mixed Mode, ongoing)
8. From Concealment to Revelation: A Study on the Diversified Discourses of Chinese Women's Underwear in the Digital Media Environment (Zhang Zihan, Master Mixed Mode, ongoing)
9. The Birth of a Trans-Asian Icon: Michelle Yeoh as Method (Jasmine Manjan Anak Tapah, Master Mixed Mode, ongoing)
10. A Sinophone Rememberance: The Prosthetic Memory of Socio-political Trauma in Manland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan Horror Games (Tang Xiaohui, Master Mixed Mode, ongoing)

Culture, society, and politics:

1. Becoming Intangible Cultural Heritage: The Cultural Transformation in Wangchuan Ceremony in Southern Fujian, China (Yan Xinting, Master Mixed Mode, graduated) 
2. Exploring the Experiential Authenticity of Qingming Reverside Landscape Garden in Kaifeng, China (Liu Xinyu, Master Mixed Mode, graduated)
3. From Prohibition to Possibility: The Case Study of the First Female Intangible Cultural Heritage Inheritor of Nuo Mask-carving in Nanfeng County in Post-Mao China (Li Pengcheng, Master Mixed Mode, graduated)
4. Becoming Mazu Believers: The Legitimization of the Shiluo mazu Temple in Malaysia (Fan Zhen, Master Mixed Mode, graduated)