The Department of Cinema and Media Studies Presents, as Part of the Marva West Tan Lecture Series:
“Revolutionary Becomings: Documentary Media in Twentieth Century China”
Ying Qian
Associate Professor | Columbia University
April 24, 2025 | 4:00 pm | Cobb 307
Reception to follow in Cobb 310
About the Lecture
In this talk, Ying Qian will present from her recent book, Revolutionary Becomings. This book approaches documentary as a prism to examine the mutual constitution of media and revolution: how revolutionary movements gave rise to specific media practices, and how these media practices in turn contributed to the specific paths of revolution’s actualization. Situating cinema’s invention in 1895 in the East Asian context of colonial warfare and revolutionary agitation, it excavates documentary’s emergence in transnational activism at the turn of the 20th century, traces its development in political contestation and war propaganda between 1920s and 1940s, examines its productivity and crisis during the Mao-era, and reflects on its participation in the Party’s rehabilitation efforts and historiographical reorientation in the post-Mao decade. Supported by wide-ranging archival work and historical analysis, the book proposes a theorization of documentary as an “eventful medium,” around which the dialectics of media practice, political relationality and revolutionary epistemology can be examined.
About the Speaker
Ying Qian is an associate professor in Chinese cinema and media studies at the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. She is also an affiliated faculty at Columbia’s Center for Comparative Media and Institute for Comparative Literature and Society. Her first book, Revolutionary Becomings: Documentary Media in Twentieth Century China (Columbia University Press, 2024), uses documentary as a method to develop an eventful theory of activist media around which the dialectics of media practice, political relationality and activist epistemology can be examined. Ying Qian’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Critical Inquiry, New Left Review, positions: asia critique, and other journals, edited volumes and websites. Continuing her interest in media and social change, she is now working on a new book project on cinema as a media of transition and reform.