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 research interests focus on interdisciplinary and transnational feminist approaches to popular fiction, films, and magazines, with an emphasis on gender, genre, and cultural encounter. Her dissertation project, tentatively titled The Deorbiting Planet: The Romantic Male in Modern Chinese Popular Culture, aims to recover the swag figure of the Romantic Male from historical amnesia, thereby offering a new, more nuanced understanding of masculinities and gender dynamics in China. Part of her work will appear at the 2024 Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Conference. Chou served on the committee for the Taiwan Studies Program's workshop on "Land/scaping Taiwan: (Non-)Humans, Environment, and Moments of Encounter," sponsored by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation. She also organized the Graduate Research Cluster on "Rethinking East Asia," supported by the Simpson Center for the Humanities.

Chou is also engaged in Digital Humanities and Public Scholarship. Her videographic essay, titled "Deconstructing the Construction: The Female Images in Chinese Detective Films, 2010-2020," explores women's roles and representation in Chinese detective cinema of the past decade. The project was developed under the auspices of 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 has won the Adelio Ferrero Award in Video Essays (Second Prize) at the 2022 Adelio Ferrero Film and Criticism Festival. It has also been published in Tecmerin: Journal of Audiovisual Essays in a special issue on "Women in Contemporary Media" and recognized as one of the "Best Video Essays of 2022" by the British Film Institute's Sight and Sound.

Awards and Fellowships

China Studies Dissertation Fellowship, China Studies Program, University of Washington, 2024
Young Scholar Award (Scholarship for Doctoral Dissertation Research in Chinese Studies), 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, Jackson School of International Studies, 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