Edited Volume by Qingyang Freya Zhou
Camden House, 2025
From re-creating seedy opium dens and Hindu temples on set to capturing dazzling sights of Tokyo'... more From re-creating seedy opium dens and Hindu temples on set to capturing dazzling sights of Tokyo's neon-lit streets and Berlin's bustling Dong Xuan Center on location, cinema has provided German-speaking audiences a window into the "exotic" cultures of Asia since the early 1900s. Over time, unilateral German imaginings of Asian cultures and people increasingly gave way to collaboration with Asian countries and more variegated portrayals of the diasporic experiences of Asians in Europe, though Orientalist tropes have not been fully mitigated.
The present volume embraces several understudied regions of Asia as well as Austria and Switzerland. It incorporates archival research, close scene analyses, and genre overviews that elucidate the production and reception histories of individual films, drawing on the knowledge of film historians, cultural studies scholars, and Germanists based in North America, Europe, and Asia. The volume approaches film history by observing three distinct phenomena: early German cinematic imaginings of Asia, co-productions shot on location, and representations of the Asian German diaspora. The book aims to chart unwritten chapters of film history by pitching new readings of old masterpieces, exploring lesser-known works of prolific directors, and uncovering the roles of Asian collaborators from the early twentieth century to the new millennium.
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles by Qingyang Freya Zhou
German Studies Review, 2023
This article investigates two contemporary German documentaries that attempt to look beyond negat... more This article investigates two contemporary German documentaries that attempt to look beyond negative stereotypes of North Korea: Eine Postkarte aus Pjöngjang (Gregor Möllers and Anne Lewald, 2019) and Meine Brüder und Schwestern im Norden (Cho Sung-hyung, 2016). I argue that the films put forward “a temporality of imminent, never-consummated arrival” by projecting multifaceted imagination onto the natural and urban landscapes of North Korea. In Postcard, the future of transnational solidarity has remained forestalled from the GDR era to the present; in Cho’s film, the affect of ethnic unity is suspended in a perpetual oscillation between identification and non-belonging.
Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies, 2022
Link to full article here: https://www.utpjournals.press/doi/epdf/10.3138/seminar.58.3.2
In qu... more Link to full article here: https://www.utpjournals.press/doi/epdf/10.3138/seminar.58.3.2
In queer German director Monika Treut’s film "Ghosted" (2009), a plethora of screen apparatuses, including cameras, laptops, and cellphones, mediate encounters among the German protagonist, Sophie Schmitt; her Taiwanese girlfriend, Ai-ling; and Ai-ling’s spectral doppelgänger, Mei-li. Examining how the screen bestows visibility on the otherwise elusive figure of the queer Asian woman while limiting her freedom, this article explores how the comparatively more fluid apparitional lesbian challenges the domesticating effect of racially charged looks by destabilizing various borders between life and death, past and present, the real and the imaginary. Although Treut valorizes the ghost’s unfathomable nature as its source of power, a full acceptance of the spectre’s opacity and epistemological differences inherently conflicts with the desire to bridge German and East Asian cultures.
focus on German Studies, 2021
Eine enge Beziehung zur Volksrepublik China (VRC) spielte eine wichtige Rolle in der Außenpolitik... more Eine enge Beziehung zur Volksrepublik China (VRC) spielte eine wichtige Rolle in der Außenpolitik der DDR am Anfang des Kalten Krieges. Der ostdeutsche Staat charakterisierte ihre Allianz mit der VRC mit ideologischen Symbolen wie „Freundschaft“, „Brüderlichkeit“ und sogar „Liebe“. Dennoch diente ein positives China-Bild weniger dem tiefgehenden Verständnis der chinesischen Lebensart als vielmehr der Legitimierung der DDR bzw. der Kennzeichnung der ostdeutschen Weltoffenheit und internationalen Anerkennung. Die kulturwissenschaftliche Theorie des Orientalismus, die Entwicklung der Gattung Reiseliteratur und die neue Konzeption von Rasse in der DDR in Betracht ziehend, analysiert die vorliegende Arbeit Gerhard Kieslings und Bernt von Kügelgens Reisebericht China (1957) als ein repräsentatives politisches Produkt, das direkt von der kurzfristigen Faszination der DDR für China inspiriert wurde. Die Abhandlung erklärt, dass die DDR einerseits eine vielversprechende neue Volksrepublik vor Augen führt, die als Folie der ostdeutschen Imagination für eine ideale sozialistische Gesellschaft in der Aufbauphase inszeniert wird. Andererseits schildern die Autoren ausführlich den Machtmissbrauch durch das Kaisertum sowie die gedankliche Rückständigkeit der normalen Bürger in den dunklen Zeiten Chinas, was zur Abgrenzung und Abwertung des Anderen im Gegensatz zum Eigenen beisteuerte. In dieser Hinsicht verweist der Reisebericht auf einen Neo-Orientalismus, der China zwar oberflächlich als einen schnell heranwachsenden sozialistischen „Bruderstaat“ anerkennt, aber gleichzeitig an einigen in früheren Zeiten verbreiteten rassistischen Klischees festhält.
Book Chapters by Qingyang Freya Zhou
East Asian-German Cinema: The Transnational Screen, 1919 to the Present, 2021
This chapter explores cultural relations between East Germany (GDR) and China (PRC) in the 1950s ... more This chapter explores cultural relations between East Germany (GDR) and China (PRC) in the 1950s through the lens of The Compass Rose (Die Windrose, 1957), a co-produced anthology film composed of five distinct stories. It argues that the film’s format as a travelogue trivializes encounters between the East German audience and their socialist comrades as merely sight-seeing. Moreover, the first four segments of the anthology are presented with their original foreign-language dialogues, which are faithfully summarized or paraphrased by a German voiceover. In the concluding Chinese segment, however, the German narrator impersonates a minor figure in the diegetic world, without translating any of the Chinese characters’ spoken dialogue. Whereas the visual element of the Chinese segment, filmed by director Wu Guoying, portrays the PRC as a progressive socialist state eager to embrace modernization, the German voiceover added by the East German studio during postproduction misrepresents the Chinese dialogue, plot, and images, thus misrepresenting the PRC in turn as a traditionalist society in which conservative views about women’s incompetence in the public sphere still predominated. As a result, the GDR missed an opportunity to establish genuine solidarity with the PRC.
Book Reviews by Qingyang Freya Zhou
Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, 2024
Presenting a comprehensive overview of the expansive landscape of contemporary South Korean docum... more Presenting a comprehensive overview of the expansive landscape of contemporary South Korean documentary cinema, "Activism and Post-activism" sheds light on the oeuvre of renowned auteurs and emerging talents alike while paying close attention to distribution networks and global cinematic revolutions that inspired key developments in Korean independent film production. The book offers rich textual and contextual analyses that would appeal to both experienced scholars and emerging researchers alike, while also serving as an excellent textbook for introductory courses on Korean documentary cinema at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
TRANSIT: A Journal of Travel, Migration, and Multiculturalism in the German-speaking World, 2022
Public Scholarship by Qingyang Freya Zhou
Monatshefte, 2025
In the fall of 2024, the Monatshefte editorial team reached out to fellow editors and book review... more In the fall of 2024, the Monatshefte editorial team reached out to fellow editors and book review editors at German studies journals that publish multiple times a year with broad (or open) topic scopes. Respondents provide transparency and insight into the challenges and causes for optimism in publishing academic work, one quarter of the way through the twenty-first century.
Multicultural Germany Project, 2021
As a rising field within Germanistik, Asian-German Studies has been a hotspot for recent scholars... more As a rising field within Germanistik, Asian-German Studies has been a hotspot for recent scholarship on postcolonialism, orientalism, gender and sexuality studies, area studies, migration studies, and more. Asian-German films, along with literature, television series, and new media, have increasingly become desirable teaching materials for courses that explore transnational aspects of German culture, history, and society. This concise Asian-German filmography, compiled by Qingyang Zhou (UC Berkeley), Zach Ramon Fitzpatrick (UIC), and Qinna Shen (Bryn Mawr), aims to provide a teaching guide not only to Germanists, but also to scholars in neighboring academic disciplines. This filmography includes fifty critically acclaimed, aesthetically creative, and/or thematically interesting Asian-German films produced by filmmakers in both the larger German-speaking world and in Asia, focusing mainly on East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. The list is organized geographically and chronologically. The countries represented are listed in descending order based on the size of the corresponding immigrant groups in Germany (see the figure below for exact numbers). Each entry includes both a short description that highlights unique features of the film and selected works of secondary literature-listed chronologically-that may be assigned as course readings.
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Edited Volume by Qingyang Freya Zhou
The present volume embraces several understudied regions of Asia as well as Austria and Switzerland. It incorporates archival research, close scene analyses, and genre overviews that elucidate the production and reception histories of individual films, drawing on the knowledge of film historians, cultural studies scholars, and Germanists based in North America, Europe, and Asia. The volume approaches film history by observing three distinct phenomena: early German cinematic imaginings of Asia, co-productions shot on location, and representations of the Asian German diaspora. The book aims to chart unwritten chapters of film history by pitching new readings of old masterpieces, exploring lesser-known works of prolific directors, and uncovering the roles of Asian collaborators from the early twentieth century to the new millennium.
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles by Qingyang Freya Zhou
In queer German director Monika Treut’s film "Ghosted" (2009), a plethora of screen apparatuses, including cameras, laptops, and cellphones, mediate encounters among the German protagonist, Sophie Schmitt; her Taiwanese girlfriend, Ai-ling; and Ai-ling’s spectral doppelgänger, Mei-li. Examining how the screen bestows visibility on the otherwise elusive figure of the queer Asian woman while limiting her freedom, this article explores how the comparatively more fluid apparitional lesbian challenges the domesticating effect of racially charged looks by destabilizing various borders between life and death, past and present, the real and the imaginary. Although Treut valorizes the ghost’s unfathomable nature as its source of power, a full acceptance of the spectre’s opacity and epistemological differences inherently conflicts with the desire to bridge German and East Asian cultures.
Book Chapters by Qingyang Freya Zhou
Book Reviews by Qingyang Freya Zhou
Public Scholarship by Qingyang Freya Zhou