Ying-Hsiu Chou (she/her/hers)

Ying-Hsiu Chou is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Asian Languages and Literature at the University of Washington. She has been a Fulbright Scholar. Her interests lie in transnational and interdisciplinary feminist approaches to Chinese modern literature and visual arts, with a focus on gender, genre, and cultural encounters. Her dissertation, tentatively titled The Deorbiting Planet: The Romantic Male in Chinese Modern Popular Culture, aims to recover from historical amnesia the subversive yet neglected swag figure of the Romantic Male. By re-understanding this figure as the counterpart to the Modern Girl—and thus as an aesthetic mode of resistance to gender norms—the dissertation challenges conventional narratives and provides alternative accounts of masculinities and gender dynamics in the modern Sinosphere. Chou has presented her work at major conferences organized by the Association for Asian Studies (AAS), Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association (PCA/ACA), Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association (RMMLA), and the Western Branch of the American Oriental Society (WBAOS). She has organized the Rethinking East Asia Graduate Research Cluster, supported by the Simpson Center for the Humanities.

Chou is also a videographic essayist. Her work, Deconstructing the Construction: The Female Images in Chinese Detective Films, 2010-2020, explores women's roles and representations in recent Chinese detective cinema. The project was supported by the Simpson Center for the Humanities and the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington, as well as the National Endowment for the Humanities. The videographic essay was published in a special issue on "Women in Contemporary Media" of Tecmerin: Journal of Audiovisual Essays. It received the Adelio Ferrero Award in Video Essays (Second Prize) at the Adelio Ferrero Film and Criticism Festival and was named among the Best Video Essays by the British Film Institute's Sight and Sound.

Awards and Fellowships

Maurice and Lois Schwartz Dissertation Fellowship, Department of Asian Languages and Literature, University of Washington, 2024
China Studies Dissertation Fellowship, China Studies Program, University of Washington, 2024
Young Scholar Award, China Times Cultural Foundation, 2023
Adelio Ferrero Award in Video Essays (Second Prize), Adelio Ferrero Film and Criticism Festival, 2022
Taiwanese Overseas Pioneers Grant, National Science and Technology Council, 2022
Graduate Research Cluster Award, Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington, 2021
Taiwan Studies Commendation Award, Taiwan Studies Program, University of Washington, 2020
Digital Humanities Summer Fellowship, Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington, 2020
Distinguished Teaching Assistant Award, Department of Asian Languages and Literature, University of Washington, 2019
Fulbright Graduate Study Award, Fulbright Taiwan (Foundation for Scholarly Exchange), 2016-21