Ying Qian

Associate Professor

Office: 930 IAB
Office Hours: F 4 PM-6 PM, Appointment required

Phone: (212)854-5027
Email: yq2189@columbia.edu

Educational Background

AB: Harvard University
MPhil: University of Cambridge, UK
PhD: Harvard University (’13)

Classes Taught

EAAS UN3322 East Asian Cinema
EAAS GU4572 Chinese Documentary Cinema
EAAS GR8998 Media Cultures in China

Research Interests

Chinese-language cinema and media; transnational media histories; media of activism, reform and critique; media ecology and knowledge formation

As a scholar of cinema and media, Ying Qian is interested in the role of media
and mediation in shaping politics, forming knowledge, and connecting realms
of experience. Her first book, Revolutionary Becomings: Documentary Media
in Twentieth-Century China (Columbia University Press, 2024) excavates
documentary’s multi-faceted productivities in China’s revolutionary
movements, from the toppling of the Qing Empire in 1911 to the political
campaigns and mass protests in the Mao and post-Mao eras. It approaches
documentary as an “eventful medium,” and 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. This book has
won the Lionel Trilling Book Award from Columbia College, and the best
book in journalism history award from the Association for Education in
Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). Ying Qian’s articles have
appeared in positions: asia critique, Critical Inquiry, New Left Review, China
Perspectives, New Literary History of Modern China, Oxford Handbook of
Chinese Cinemas, and other journals and websites. She is also the co-editor
(with Nicholas Bartlett) of a special issue, Neng 能and China’s Long 1980s
(positions: asia critique, 33.3 August 2025). At Columbia, she teaches classes
on East Asian cinema, Chinese media cultures, documentary media, media of
science and technology, and comparative media theory and history. Drawing
from her experiences in filmmaking, she has incorporated creative
assignments in her classes, guiding students to try their hands on media
productions.

Selected Publications

“The Rise of the Brain: Envisioning Human Potential in 1980s China” (single-authored), and
“Neng and China’s 1980s: a Reevaluation” (co-authored with Nicholas Bartlett), in Nicholas Bartlett and Ying Qian eds., Neng 能 and China’s Long 1980s (special issue), 
positions: asia critique v. 33, no. 3, August 2025.

Revolutionary Becomings: Documentary Media in Twentieth-Century China (Columbia
University Press, 2024)

“When Taylorism Met Revolutionary Romanticism: Documentary Cinema in China’s Great Leap
Forward”, Critical Inquiry (Spring 2020).

“The Spectre of Liu Shaoqi,” in A New Literary History of Modern China (Harvard, 2017)
“Working with Rubble: Montage, Tweets, and the Reconstruction of an Activist Cinema,”
in China’s iGeneration: Filmmakers, Films and Audiences in a New Media Age (Continuum,
2014)

“Power in the Frame: Independent Documentary in China,” The New Left Review (2012)