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Jennifer Dorothy Lee

Associate Professor

Contact

Bio

Education: PhD, 2014, New York University; MA, 2003, University of London; BA, 2000, Columbia University. Publications: positions: asia critique (forthcoming); Screen Bodies; Art Journal; Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art; Frontiers of Literary Studies in China; Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas. Catalog Essay: The Research House for Asian Art and Co-Prosperity Sphere, Chicago, IL. Translation: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Frontiers of Literary Studies in China, Critical Asian Studies, Guggenheim Museum. Awards: FirstGen Grant, University of California Press; Visiting Scholar, New York University; Publication Grant, Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation; Faculty of the Year, SAIC; Getty Visiting Lectureship, University of Chicago; SAIC Diversity Infusion Grant; SAIC Team-Teaching Award; International Center for Critical Theory Dissertation Fellowship; Sun Yat-sen University Visiting Scholar Research Fellowship; NYU Henry M. MacCracken Fellowship; Critical Language Scholarship; Arts and Humanities Research Board Grant (UK).

Personal Statement

Jennifer Dorothy Lee (she/her) studies art and cultural practices in modern and contemporary China. Lee's research and teaching focus encompasses social history, aesthetic theory, and transnational perspectives. Trained in comparative literature, Lee brings literary frames and methodologies to her work on visual and material objects. In addition to China-related topics, Lee's research extends to histories of social movement in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Lee's first book, Anxiety Aesthetics: Maoist Legacies in China, 1978–1985, is now out with the University of California Press (2024). Anxiety Aesthetics offers a sustained study of aesthetic theory, art, and subjectivity redefined in the fleeting historical moment bridging the Mao era with Dengist reforms. Lee's next research project will take up personal and social histories of art amid the dynamics of Cold War international diplomacy, with special attention to Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Recent Thesis Advisees

Mengran Liu (2023), “Root-Searching Nonstop: On the Revival of Chinese Folk Art in Contemporary Art Practices from the New Folk Art to Art Rural Reconstructions”
Chenghan Gao (2021), “Guohua as a Transnational Concept in Global Context (1911-1945)”
Lynette Shen (2021), “A Body in Places: Performative Monumentality in Eiko Otake’s Spectral Performance”
Gabrielle Christiansen (2020), "Make a Better Day: Historicizing the Charity Single in Samson Young’s Songs for Disaster Relief"
Minh Nguyen (2020), "School of Thought: The Conceptual, Language-Based Practice and Pedagogy of Sàn Art"
Jacob Zhicheng Zhang (2019), "Performing Stereotypes: The Art of Migration in Tseng Kwong Chi, Nikki S. Lee, and Ming Wong"

Work

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

This seminar is part of the 'Global Cinema Histories' film series at the Gene Siskel Film Centre, where we will meet to watch films and discuss them.

The term propaganda, originally used for religious purposes to ¿propagate¿ faith, has historically been seen as a neutral or even positive tool to disseminate information, and is characterized by forceful messages and aesthetics. For both politicians and activists, propaganda has practical uses. More often than not, today the term elicits strong responses of wariness and dubious denial.

The focus of this course is on the filmic output related to propaganda in the 20th and 21st centuries, when new technologies and the use of reproductive media met mass movements and big political shifts. We will cover Italian Fascism and German National Socialism¿s ¿aestheticization of politics¿, as Walter Benjamin described it. We will address Eastern European Socialist Aesthetics, revolutionary cinema in China and Hong Kong, the White Terror years in Taiwan, the pop culture of a divided Korea, and the revolutions in South America. We will explore the relationship of propaganda to colonialism, imperialism, and globalization. We will consider official politics, grassroots movements, and the blurred lines distinguishing these realms. Writing short reflections and reviews, some reading, and lots of time for discussion will structure the course.

Class Number

2272

Credits

3

Description

This course explores the expression of social imagination in modern China, from the early 20th century to the present day, through the cinematic medium. Taking a selection of representative films and film criticism particular to the mainland, the course will survey constructions of social space throughout distinct historical periods. These include the mise-en-scene of the 1930s silver screen (Wu Yonggang?' The Goddess), Maoist revolutionary representation (Jiang Qing's model opera-ballets), as well as critical portrayals of globalization in the 21st century (Jia Zhangke's The World).

Class Number

1283

Credits

3

Description

Taking China as both a focal point and point of departure, this course is intended to familiarize students with core concepts of the philosophy of art in a comparative framework. We will examine the emergence of modern aesthetics as a topic of heated debate in 20th century China, the politicization of aesthetic theory that occurs during the high point of revolutionary movement, and the dispersal of aesthetic concerns amid global marketization and mass consumerism in the present day. Texts to be examined include writings of Immanuel Kant and Cai Yuanpei, Hu Shi and John Dewey, Mao Zedong and Karl Marx, Slavoj Zizek and Xi Jinping.

Class Number

2351

Credits

3

Description

Framed by the Low-Residency MFA theme of 'Poetics,' this course is an art historical investigation into perception in connection with aesthetics in four key areas: Black Arts Movement, Afro-Futurism, Ritual Art Performance in the African Diaspora, and African Art and Design. With an eye to the concept of ?sculpting space? and location in the liminal and the margins as defined by bell hooks, we will consider perceptions of Self and Other, identity expression as intentional resistance and creative expression, ?Africa? and notions of ?African art,? and performative modes of production. How does work become canonized and remembered? How do movements form a foundation for contemporary practices? This course understands the artist as a kind of divine sculptor, trickster-DJ-griot, considering methodologies such as oral history, indigenous systems, and community legacies to critique time as linear and interrogate perceptions of body, location, belonging, and what it means to center oneself via art.

Class Number

1218

Credits

3