This site is an archive of my writing on film, music, and culture.

Back in high school, I saw my first online publication go up on a website called 24framespersecond.com, which no longer exists. Not that I necessarily want the world to see that short essay (“In Defense of the Art House,” it was austerely titled), but the fact that it’s gone had me thinking about the ephemerality of not just internet publishing, but of my own footprints, which have led me on journeys – professional, scholarly, cinematic – that continue to inspire my future directions.

I’ll slowly add articles to this site, prioritizing essays that are harder to find, backdating older pieces, noting the original publication source and linking to original URLs if they still exist. And I’m still writing, so whenever appropriate, I’ll add newer work.

A little about myself

I am an Associate Professor in Television, Film and New Media at San Diego State University, where I teach classes on film theory and international cinema. I’m also the Artistic Director of Pacific Arts Movement, which presents the San Diego Asian Film Festival. Before that, I was the co-editor of Asia Pacific Arts, an online magazine first published through the UCLA Asia Institute and later the USC US-China Institute.

My book Worldly Desires: Cosmopolitanism and Cinema in Hong Kong and Taiwan, a historical study of around-the-world musicals, Chinese American movie stars, 1970s melodramas, and Shaolin Temple exiles, is published by Edinburgh University Press and is based on my PhD dissertation, completed in Cinema and Media Studies from UCLA and supported through a Fulbright grant.

I’ve been featured in the San Diego Union-Tribune and Angry Asian Man, and you may have heard me on PRI’s The World or KPBS Midday Edition. I also lend my voice to the Asian American pop culture podcast Saturday School, which I co-host and co-produce with my old Asian Pacific Arts co-conspirator Ada Tseng. I’ve also curated film programs for the UCLA Film & Television Archive and the Criterion Channel.

You can find my CV on my SDSU faculty page.