Qinna Shen | Bryn Mawr College (original) (raw)
Papers by Qinna Shen
Multicultural Germany Project, University of California, Berkeley, 2021
This concise Asian German filmography, compiled by Qingyang Freya Zhou (UC Berkeley), Zach Ramon ... more This concise Asian German filmography, compiled by Qingyang Freya Zhou (UC Berkeley), Zach Ramon Fitzpatrick (U of Wisconsin-Madison), and Qinna Shen (Bryn Mawr College), aims to provide a teaching guide not only to Germanists, but also to scholars in neighboring academic disciplines. For those who are interested, a longer list of Asian German films can be accessed here.
This filmography includes fifty critically acclaimed, aesthetically creative, and/or thematically interesting Asian German films produced by filmmakers in both the larger German-speaking world and in Asia, focusing mainly on East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. We prioritize films that are available on VHS, DVD, and online streaming platforms.
EIN GASTBEITRAG VON QINNA SHEN am 15. Dezember 2020 Zeigt der Umgang mit dem Coronavirus, dass da... more EIN GASTBEITRAG VON QINNA SHEN am 15. Dezember 2020 Zeigt der Umgang mit dem Coronavirus, dass das chinesische System der westlichen Welt überlegen ist? Der Autoritarismus scheint zwar erfolgreich zu sein, doch China braucht dringend eine Aufklärung. Die chinesische Jugend wird auf die Überlegenheit ihres Heimatlandes getrimmt / dpa
You Are Still Your Parent's Children The New German Left and Everyday Anti-Semitism My more or le... more You Are Still Your Parent's Children The New German Left and Everyday Anti-Semitism My more or less dear left-wing friends! 1 I'm writing this letter because I no longer have any desire to talk to you. I just want to get a few things off my chest and on the record. It won't make anything better, but it will make some things clearer. And that is my sole concern. A couple of weeks ago, I was in a so-called countercultural pub. On the walls-posters about Chile, El Salvador, Iran; on the tables-an appeal for solidarity with the imprisoned IRA comrades; in the bathroom-sayings carved in the wall, among others: "We are the people your parents warned you about!" Great, I thought, they are proud of their parents' mistakes! You think you are so much different from your parents. You have, so it seems, achieved something no generation before you has ever accomplished: you have severed yourself completely from the tree from which you fell. A few days ago, I read an interview with some progressive punk-rocker types in the taz, Berlin's left-wing daily newspaper. In answer to the question, "What do you guys think about fascism?" one of these twentysomethings replied: "I didn't stick no Jew in the KZ; I didn't shoot no Poles; I really don't got nothing to do with that, that was my father or my grandfather. I don't blame my grandmother or my ancestors for the Thirty Years' War, neither...?' Another one of the punk rockers was quick to bridge past and present by saying: "Back then they gassed the Jews; today people are executed in Stammheim?' 2 Not everything that falls from the lips of "counterculturals" sounds so trite and stupid. But these statements set precisely those parameters that constrict the growth of your own historical consciousness: You "really have nothing to do" with your history. So the thought of what your parents did to the Jews comes to mind, if at all, only when you complain about how badly some social groups are being treated today. Women, students, or gays become the "Jews of today"; you are as oblivious to the audacity of such comparisons as you are to the fact that, in constructing them, you place yourselves in the immediate proximity of right-wing politicians like Strauß, Stoiber, and Kohl, who consider it appropriate to equate the anti-Strauß campaign with the Jew-baiting of Der Stürmer: You, too, abuse millions of dead for your everyday political agendas. You have lost all your principles, if you ever had any. I could give you credit for some mitigating circumstances: your parents have abandoned you. What little you do know about your own history you have picked up by chance. You can
The German Quarterly, 2020
The German Quarterly 93.1 (Winter 2020) ©2020, american association of teachers of German is asia... more The German Quarterly 93.1 (Winter 2020) ©2020, american association of teachers of German is asian German studies? aren't the "German" and "asian" parts so different in size, history, and their internal diversity that a comparison can only be out of balance? What methodologies or research trends have been informing asian German studies? how can research connections made between asian-and German-language literatures and cultures yield insights that can be useful for related fields? What is the relationship of asian German studies to asian american studies, turkish German studies, arab German studies, afro-German studies, multicultural German studies, or global German studies? historically and theoretically speaking, asian German studies benefits from area studies and postcolonial studies. area studies, which emerged during the Cold War and made geography into its organizing principle, effected a move beyond disciplinary boundaries-for instance by connecting the social sciences and the humanities in order to understand asia, africa, europe, and the americas as areas much larger than a single nation-state. Multiple disciplines also became involved: political science, history, geography, economics, religious studies, linguistics, and literary and cultural studies all started to work together in creating an interdisciplinary synergy that turned out to be useful to understand cultural and political commonalities and differences beyond national borders. edward Said's field-defining Orientalism (1978) and its reception in postcolonial studies drew scholars' attention to hybrid cultural experiences and uneven power balances in former european colonies. Unlike area studies, the cultures examined by postcolonial studies, such as india and Britain, are not necessarily geographically adjacent to each other, but they are historically and linguistically connected through centuries-long colonial encounters and their postcolonial repercussions. key concepts such as hybridity, cultural difference, mimicry, and subalternity have had an impact on literary and cultural studies across disciplines. yet, while anglophone, Francophone, latin american studies, and asian american studies are directly associated with european settlements, colonial encounters, slave trade, economic exploitation, warfare, and migration, asian German studies, quantitively speaking, could claim few direct colonial entanglements as its subject matter. While Wilhelmine Germany had comparatively short-lived and small-scale colonial settlements in africa, asia, and on the Pacific islands, the lack of a "Germanophone" literature in asia-and this is probably a good thing-does not provide asian German studies with the kind of historical foundation that informs anglophone, Francophone, latin american studies, or asian american studies. hence, the theoretical concepts gained from postcolonial studies based on different historical circumstances may be of limited use for asian German studies. at the same time, while area studies usually focuses on one extensive and connected geographical and cultural landscape in asia, africa, or america, in the case of asian German studies, a different paradigm is needed. transnational or transcultural studies could offer an alternative for asian German studies. yet these disciplines also borrow from area studies and postcolonial theory, and that limits their scope as well.
JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, 2021
The year 1989 comprises a vital part of the Tiananmen generation’s memory and identity. Yet any a... more The year 1989 comprises a vital part of the Tiananmen generation’s memory and identity. Yet any attempt to address the turbulent events of that year, however obliquely, carries a high risk of censorship. Lou Ye took that risk in Summer Palace (2006). His iconoclastic exploration of sex and politics at a thinly disguised Beijing University was banned in China and languishes in relative obscurity in the West. This article endeavors to ensure that Summer Palace receives the serious recognition it deserves. The film’s narrative arc stretches from Beijing to Berlin and uses a delayed death in Berlin as an opportunity to commemorate the dead of 1989. Yiheyuan (Summer Palace, Lou Ye, 2006), a ChineseFrench coproduction set primarily in Beijing and Berlin, is a film that broke two taboos at once,
Author(s): Shen, Qinna | Abstract: Taking a cue from a painting by Jiny Lan, a Chinese artist liv... more Author(s): Shen, Qinna | Abstract: Taking a cue from a painting by Jiny Lan, a Chinese artist living in Germany, which captures Merkel’s refugee policy in 2015, the article examines both official and popular responses to the recent Syrian refugee crisis in China and other East Asian countries. In the painting, Merkel wears a Manchu-style headdress typical of women at the Qing court. Lan’s portrait of the German Chancellor resembles the Empress Dowager Cixi—one of the most powerful women in Chinese history, and a ruler with a contentious legacy. The article distills some of the major reasons for a positive or negative attitude toward accepting refugees among Chinese living in both China and Germany. In the coda, it briefly touches on reactions in Japan and South Korea to provide context and contrast.Although popular opinion in China and within Germany’s Chinese communities is divided on the refugee question, there is little interest among Chinese in either country in building a Willk...
The Mathematical Intelligencer, 2019
German Studies Review, 2019
Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies, 2011
In 1937, John Rabe (1882-1950), the Nazi director of the Nanking branch of Siemens and chairman o... more In 1937, John Rabe (1882-1950), the Nazi director of the Nanking branch of Siemens and chairman of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone, saved over 200,000 Chinese during the Nanking massacre, one of the most brutal episodes of the Japanese invasion of China (1931-1945). His feat was recently revivified in a film by Florian Gallenberger. The film, John Rabe, can be categorized as another attempt in the search for "good Germans" or, more bluntly, for "good Nazis," a paradoxical term memorably applied to Oskar Schindler, whose story was popularized in Steven Spielberg's 1993 film, Schindler's List (e.g. Koltnow). Gallenberger's film gained acclaim after a successful premiere at the Berlinale in February 2009, and, two months later, it again received extensive media coverage after winning four German prizes, including those for best picture and best actor. German newspapers almost unanimously stated that Rabe has been considered a "saint" and the "Oskar Schindler of China," though his story was hardly known in Germany. Despite the 1997 publication of his Nanking and Berlin diaries by Erwin Wickert, a former diplomat to China who stayed at Rabe's residence in 1936, and the 1997 publication of the late Iris Chang's bestseller The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, in which Chang shares her discovery of Rabe's diaries, Rabe remained largely unrecognized outside of China. The biopic brought Rabe's heroism into focus, publicizing his name and story while mediating between Hollywood cinema and Nazi-retro films. This article reiterates Rabe's life story, compares his diaries with Gallenberger's representation in the film, places the film within the discourses of Nazi-retro films and Asian-German geopolitics, and considers reasons for the film's subordination of an objective account of atrocities to a version of events whose heroic and romantic elements would more likely ensure commercial success. It surveys media reports, reviews, and interviews, and in doing so examines the film's reception in Germany, China, and Japan. Noting the past unawareness and neglect of this tragedy as a result of the Chinese Civil War and the rivalries between China and Japan, this article also situates the film within the recent decades of controversy and debate about the massacre and discusses how they shed light on politics, memory, and national identity.
Monatshefte, 2021
German Leitkultur, turn interculturality itself into a point of investigation, or challenge notio... more German Leitkultur, turn interculturality itself into a point of investigation, or challenge notions of alterity altogether. After serving as a quote-worthy contrarian in several earlier chapters, Thomas Wörtche contributes an essay in which he situates the genre within broader literary discourses. Here, Wörtche provocatively reads how the scholarly reception of German crime fiction long determined its obscurity, (re-)discovery, and ultimate rehabilitation among literary scholars. Given the centrality of this reception history for understanding German crime fiction overall and his consideration of the genre as fundamentally multi-media, this essay might have served as part of the volume’s conceptual framework had it appeared earlier. William Collins Donahue and Jochen Vogt contribute a final chapter-length essay on teaching German crime fiction at US universities. Drawing on their experiences at Duke University, the two make the case for how such content may provide a springboard for...
Focus on German Studies, 2008
Multicultural Germany Project, University of California, Berkeley, 2021
This concise Asian German filmography, compiled by Qingyang Freya Zhou (UC Berkeley), Zach Ramon ... more This concise Asian German filmography, compiled by Qingyang Freya Zhou (UC Berkeley), Zach Ramon Fitzpatrick (U of Wisconsin-Madison), and Qinna Shen (Bryn Mawr College), aims to provide a teaching guide not only to Germanists, but also to scholars in neighboring academic disciplines. For those who are interested, a longer list of Asian German films can be accessed here.
This filmography includes fifty critically acclaimed, aesthetically creative, and/or thematically interesting Asian German films produced by filmmakers in both the larger German-speaking world and in Asia, focusing mainly on East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. We prioritize films that are available on VHS, DVD, and online streaming platforms.
EIN GASTBEITRAG VON QINNA SHEN am 15. Dezember 2020 Zeigt der Umgang mit dem Coronavirus, dass da... more EIN GASTBEITRAG VON QINNA SHEN am 15. Dezember 2020 Zeigt der Umgang mit dem Coronavirus, dass das chinesische System der westlichen Welt überlegen ist? Der Autoritarismus scheint zwar erfolgreich zu sein, doch China braucht dringend eine Aufklärung. Die chinesische Jugend wird auf die Überlegenheit ihres Heimatlandes getrimmt / dpa
You Are Still Your Parent's Children The New German Left and Everyday Anti-Semitism My more or le... more You Are Still Your Parent's Children The New German Left and Everyday Anti-Semitism My more or less dear left-wing friends! 1 I'm writing this letter because I no longer have any desire to talk to you. I just want to get a few things off my chest and on the record. It won't make anything better, but it will make some things clearer. And that is my sole concern. A couple of weeks ago, I was in a so-called countercultural pub. On the walls-posters about Chile, El Salvador, Iran; on the tables-an appeal for solidarity with the imprisoned IRA comrades; in the bathroom-sayings carved in the wall, among others: "We are the people your parents warned you about!" Great, I thought, they are proud of their parents' mistakes! You think you are so much different from your parents. You have, so it seems, achieved something no generation before you has ever accomplished: you have severed yourself completely from the tree from which you fell. A few days ago, I read an interview with some progressive punk-rocker types in the taz, Berlin's left-wing daily newspaper. In answer to the question, "What do you guys think about fascism?" one of these twentysomethings replied: "I didn't stick no Jew in the KZ; I didn't shoot no Poles; I really don't got nothing to do with that, that was my father or my grandfather. I don't blame my grandmother or my ancestors for the Thirty Years' War, neither...?' Another one of the punk rockers was quick to bridge past and present by saying: "Back then they gassed the Jews; today people are executed in Stammheim?' 2 Not everything that falls from the lips of "counterculturals" sounds so trite and stupid. But these statements set precisely those parameters that constrict the growth of your own historical consciousness: You "really have nothing to do" with your history. So the thought of what your parents did to the Jews comes to mind, if at all, only when you complain about how badly some social groups are being treated today. Women, students, or gays become the "Jews of today"; you are as oblivious to the audacity of such comparisons as you are to the fact that, in constructing them, you place yourselves in the immediate proximity of right-wing politicians like Strauß, Stoiber, and Kohl, who consider it appropriate to equate the anti-Strauß campaign with the Jew-baiting of Der Stürmer: You, too, abuse millions of dead for your everyday political agendas. You have lost all your principles, if you ever had any. I could give you credit for some mitigating circumstances: your parents have abandoned you. What little you do know about your own history you have picked up by chance. You can
The German Quarterly, 2020
The German Quarterly 93.1 (Winter 2020) ©2020, american association of teachers of German is asia... more The German Quarterly 93.1 (Winter 2020) ©2020, american association of teachers of German is asian German studies? aren't the "German" and "asian" parts so different in size, history, and their internal diversity that a comparison can only be out of balance? What methodologies or research trends have been informing asian German studies? how can research connections made between asian-and German-language literatures and cultures yield insights that can be useful for related fields? What is the relationship of asian German studies to asian american studies, turkish German studies, arab German studies, afro-German studies, multicultural German studies, or global German studies? historically and theoretically speaking, asian German studies benefits from area studies and postcolonial studies. area studies, which emerged during the Cold War and made geography into its organizing principle, effected a move beyond disciplinary boundaries-for instance by connecting the social sciences and the humanities in order to understand asia, africa, europe, and the americas as areas much larger than a single nation-state. Multiple disciplines also became involved: political science, history, geography, economics, religious studies, linguistics, and literary and cultural studies all started to work together in creating an interdisciplinary synergy that turned out to be useful to understand cultural and political commonalities and differences beyond national borders. edward Said's field-defining Orientalism (1978) and its reception in postcolonial studies drew scholars' attention to hybrid cultural experiences and uneven power balances in former european colonies. Unlike area studies, the cultures examined by postcolonial studies, such as india and Britain, are not necessarily geographically adjacent to each other, but they are historically and linguistically connected through centuries-long colonial encounters and their postcolonial repercussions. key concepts such as hybridity, cultural difference, mimicry, and subalternity have had an impact on literary and cultural studies across disciplines. yet, while anglophone, Francophone, latin american studies, and asian american studies are directly associated with european settlements, colonial encounters, slave trade, economic exploitation, warfare, and migration, asian German studies, quantitively speaking, could claim few direct colonial entanglements as its subject matter. While Wilhelmine Germany had comparatively short-lived and small-scale colonial settlements in africa, asia, and on the Pacific islands, the lack of a "Germanophone" literature in asia-and this is probably a good thing-does not provide asian German studies with the kind of historical foundation that informs anglophone, Francophone, latin american studies, or asian american studies. hence, the theoretical concepts gained from postcolonial studies based on different historical circumstances may be of limited use for asian German studies. at the same time, while area studies usually focuses on one extensive and connected geographical and cultural landscape in asia, africa, or america, in the case of asian German studies, a different paradigm is needed. transnational or transcultural studies could offer an alternative for asian German studies. yet these disciplines also borrow from area studies and postcolonial theory, and that limits their scope as well.
JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, 2021
The year 1989 comprises a vital part of the Tiananmen generation’s memory and identity. Yet any a... more The year 1989 comprises a vital part of the Tiananmen generation’s memory and identity. Yet any attempt to address the turbulent events of that year, however obliquely, carries a high risk of censorship. Lou Ye took that risk in Summer Palace (2006). His iconoclastic exploration of sex and politics at a thinly disguised Beijing University was banned in China and languishes in relative obscurity in the West. This article endeavors to ensure that Summer Palace receives the serious recognition it deserves. The film’s narrative arc stretches from Beijing to Berlin and uses a delayed death in Berlin as an opportunity to commemorate the dead of 1989. Yiheyuan (Summer Palace, Lou Ye, 2006), a ChineseFrench coproduction set primarily in Beijing and Berlin, is a film that broke two taboos at once,
Author(s): Shen, Qinna | Abstract: Taking a cue from a painting by Jiny Lan, a Chinese artist liv... more Author(s): Shen, Qinna | Abstract: Taking a cue from a painting by Jiny Lan, a Chinese artist living in Germany, which captures Merkel’s refugee policy in 2015, the article examines both official and popular responses to the recent Syrian refugee crisis in China and other East Asian countries. In the painting, Merkel wears a Manchu-style headdress typical of women at the Qing court. Lan’s portrait of the German Chancellor resembles the Empress Dowager Cixi—one of the most powerful women in Chinese history, and a ruler with a contentious legacy. The article distills some of the major reasons for a positive or negative attitude toward accepting refugees among Chinese living in both China and Germany. In the coda, it briefly touches on reactions in Japan and South Korea to provide context and contrast.Although popular opinion in China and within Germany’s Chinese communities is divided on the refugee question, there is little interest among Chinese in either country in building a Willk...
The Mathematical Intelligencer, 2019
German Studies Review, 2019
Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies, 2011
In 1937, John Rabe (1882-1950), the Nazi director of the Nanking branch of Siemens and chairman o... more In 1937, John Rabe (1882-1950), the Nazi director of the Nanking branch of Siemens and chairman of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone, saved over 200,000 Chinese during the Nanking massacre, one of the most brutal episodes of the Japanese invasion of China (1931-1945). His feat was recently revivified in a film by Florian Gallenberger. The film, John Rabe, can be categorized as another attempt in the search for "good Germans" or, more bluntly, for "good Nazis," a paradoxical term memorably applied to Oskar Schindler, whose story was popularized in Steven Spielberg's 1993 film, Schindler's List (e.g. Koltnow). Gallenberger's film gained acclaim after a successful premiere at the Berlinale in February 2009, and, two months later, it again received extensive media coverage after winning four German prizes, including those for best picture and best actor. German newspapers almost unanimously stated that Rabe has been considered a "saint" and the "Oskar Schindler of China," though his story was hardly known in Germany. Despite the 1997 publication of his Nanking and Berlin diaries by Erwin Wickert, a former diplomat to China who stayed at Rabe's residence in 1936, and the 1997 publication of the late Iris Chang's bestseller The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, in which Chang shares her discovery of Rabe's diaries, Rabe remained largely unrecognized outside of China. The biopic brought Rabe's heroism into focus, publicizing his name and story while mediating between Hollywood cinema and Nazi-retro films. This article reiterates Rabe's life story, compares his diaries with Gallenberger's representation in the film, places the film within the discourses of Nazi-retro films and Asian-German geopolitics, and considers reasons for the film's subordination of an objective account of atrocities to a version of events whose heroic and romantic elements would more likely ensure commercial success. It surveys media reports, reviews, and interviews, and in doing so examines the film's reception in Germany, China, and Japan. Noting the past unawareness and neglect of this tragedy as a result of the Chinese Civil War and the rivalries between China and Japan, this article also situates the film within the recent decades of controversy and debate about the massacre and discusses how they shed light on politics, memory, and national identity.
Monatshefte, 2021
German Leitkultur, turn interculturality itself into a point of investigation, or challenge notio... more German Leitkultur, turn interculturality itself into a point of investigation, or challenge notions of alterity altogether. After serving as a quote-worthy contrarian in several earlier chapters, Thomas Wörtche contributes an essay in which he situates the genre within broader literary discourses. Here, Wörtche provocatively reads how the scholarly reception of German crime fiction long determined its obscurity, (re-)discovery, and ultimate rehabilitation among literary scholars. Given the centrality of this reception history for understanding German crime fiction overall and his consideration of the genre as fundamentally multi-media, this essay might have served as part of the volume’s conceptual framework had it appeared earlier. William Collins Donahue and Jochen Vogt contribute a final chapter-length essay on teaching German crime fiction at US universities. Drawing on their experiences at Duke University, the two make the case for how such content may provide a springboard for...
Focus on German Studies, 2008
Filmblatt, 27. Jg., Nr. 78 , 2022
Filmblatt, 25. Jg., Nr. 72, 2020
Fabula: Journal of Folktale Studies, 2016
German Studies Review , 2015
Multicultural Germany Project (UC Berkeley), 2021
As a rising field within Germanistik, Asian-German Studies has been a hotspot for recent scholars... more As a rising field within Germanistik, Asian-German Studies has been a hotspot for recent scholarship on postcolonialism, orientalism, gender and sexuality studies, area studies, migration studies, and more. Asian-German films, along with literature, television series, and new media, have increasingly become desirable teaching materials for courses that explore transnational aspects of German culture, history, and society. This concise Asian-German filmography, compiled by Qingyang Zhou (UC Berkeley), Zach Ramon Fitzpatrick (UIC), and Qinna Shen (Bryn Mawr), aims to provide a teaching guide not only to Germanists, but also to scholars in neighboring academic disciplines. This filmography includes fifty critically acclaimed, aesthetically creative, and/or thematically interesting Asian-German films produced by filmmakers in both the larger German-speaking world and in Asia, focusing mainly on East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. The list is organized geographically and chronologically. Each entry includes both a short description and selected works of secondary criticism. The filmography also has a link to a long list with hundreds of titles.