Curriculum Vitae
Last Updated: May 30 2026

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Information on this page is subject to change. For the most current information about me, please check out my substack page.

I’m a cultural historian with research interests in modern visual culture and history of Taiwan, Japan, China and Korea. I have published works on stories of early photo studios in Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period (1895-1945), the “nativist (native soil) photography” of the 1960s, as well as studies on cultural propaganda, visual media and East Asian folklore of the early twentieth century.

My current book-length project explores the history of image- and community-making in Taiwan and postwar East Asia with a special focus on Cold War propaganda.

At the Asian Studies Center (ASC), the University of Pittsburgh, I’m a researcher and manager for the Global Taiwan Program, a joint project between the ASC, the University Center for International Studies (UCIS), and the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia (NCTA).

Previously, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at NYU Shanghai. Please see here for the classes I taught and am teaching.

professional

Global Taiwan Program.
ASC, U Pitt
2026-

Global Perspectives on Society (course/program)
NYU Shanghai, 2019-22

Cold War Propaganda in Postcolonial Taiwan.
Sigur Center for Asian Studies, GWU,
2024-25

Education

PhD, Chinese Studies.
CUHK, 2018

MA, Asian Studies.
UC Berkeley, 2010

BA, History.
National Taiwan University,
2008

PUblications

(forthcoming in 2027)
Camera Formosan: Photography, Colonial Taiwan, and the Cold War Mediascape

(forthcoming) Channeling Water and Voices: Infrastructural Propaganda and the Soundscape of Resistance in Cold War Taiwan, 1960-1990

Wayfaring: Photography in Taiwan, 1950s-80s.
“Recovering Land and Rural Life: Liu An-Ming and ‘Nativist Photography’ in Postwar Taiwan”
(Australia National University, 2025)

Verge: Studies in Global Asias.
“Monuments of Culture: Minzoku Taiwan and the Search for Local History in Colonial Taiwan (1938-1950)”
2023

Exhibition Book I
“Between Resemblance and Reality--Early Portrait Photo Studios and the Making of Visual Traditions in Taiwan’s Local Society, 1895-1940”
(Taipei: National Center of Photography and Images, 2021)

projects

Global Taiwan Centering Taiwan in Global Asia (a Pitt ASC/UCIS initiative)

From TPE to DCA (Essays); my post-COVID journeys across Taipei, Shanghai, Pittsburgh and Washington DC.
ongoing

community

Diaries of Wu Yung-hsiang/吳墉祥日記
Republic of China History and Culture Society,
2019-24

Photographers of Taiwan Series: Peng Ruey-lin, Guan Xiao-rong, Liu An-ming/
台灣攝影家：彭瑞麟、關曉榮、劉安明
Taipei: National Center of Photography and Images
2018-20

ASC/Pitt Global Taiwan Study Tour (a Fulbright-Hays group projects abroad program)
June-July 2025

Anne Ma/#kuoanma/馬國安

Modern asia history & photography