Xin Peng

I work at the intersection of American film history, media technologies, and racial formation. I’ve written on talkies and early Asian American movie stars, Anna May Wong and Sessue Hayakawa (published in Camera Obscura); early Technicolor and Hollywood Orientalism (appeared in Screen); and 1930s Busby Berkeley musical and racial capitalism. I am now writing a book-length media history on San Francisco’s Chinatown telephone exchange (c. 1901-1949) and its telephone operators. Other miscellaneous writings (reviews, encyclopedic entries, short research essays) can be found in Technology and Culture, ASAP/J, Women Film Pioneers Project, and New Review of Film and Television Studies.

I am the current book reviewers editor of Early Popular Visual Culture, having previously served as the managing editor for Feminist Media Histories and assistant editor for the Journal of Chinese Cinemas. I received my Ph.D. degree from the University of Washington. Before Seattle, I studied for my MA at the University of Chicago, and BA at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.