Gary Wang

Gary’s research focuses on the proliferation of images in the early-twentieth century Chinese press and their relationship to the spread of neologisms such as art (meishu) and physical culture (tiyu).  Past work has examined the ambiguities of images in relation to public debates about the “woman question” (funu wenti) and female same-sex love (tongxing’ai) as published in a 1930s Shanghai women’s magazine.  His dissertation project examines images of the Modern Girl and Muscleman to consider the role of visuality in shifting historical perceptions of the body and associated questions about nation, class, gender and respectability in China from circa 1920 to 1959.  Current undergraduate teaching introduces topics in the study of art, visuality and material culture in modern and contemporary Japan, China and Korea with a focus on the ways in which new practices of portrayal, display and looking were entangled in historical politics of imperialism (both European and Asian), nationalism, self-expression and social change.

Selected Publications

• “Affecting Grandiosity: Manchuness and the Liangbatou Hairdo-Turned-Headpiece Circa 1870s-1930s,” Kyunghee Pyun and Aida Yuen Wong, ed., Fashion, Identity, and Power in Modern Asia, London: Palgrave Macmillan: 167-92.
• “Making ‘Opposite-sex Love’ in Print: Discourse and Discord in Linglong Women’s Pictorial Magazine,” NAN NÜ: Men, Women, and Gender in China 13 (2011): 244-347.

Recent Awards:

• 2012-2018 Jackman Junior Fellow in the Humanities
• 2017 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Doctoral Fellowship (declined)