Prof. Jean Ma
PhD, University of Chicago
BA, University of California, Berkeley
Mr. and Mrs. Hung Hing-Ying Professor in the Arts
email: jeanma@hku.hk
Jean Ma is a scholar of film and media history and theory, with specializations in Asian cinema, gender, sexuality, sound studies, and moving image art. Her books are Melancholy Drift: Marking Time in Chinese Cinema; Sounding the Modern Woman: The Songstress in Chinese Cinema; Still Moving: Between Cinema and Photography; and At the Edges of Sleep: Moving Image and Somnolent Spectators. Her work has appeared in the journals Grey Room, October, Camera Obscura, Film Quarterly, Criticism, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, and numerous edited volumes. She serves on the editorial board of Film Quarterly and is an coeditor of the book series California Studies in Music, Sound, and Media at the University of California Press. For more of her writing, see jeanma.xyz.
A note for prospective PhDs: in this year’s selection cycle, I will be reviewing applications on November 15. I am unable to read, comment on, or discuss individual applications in advance of this date.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
• film and media history and theory
• gender and sexuality studies
• sound studies
• moving image art
PUBLICATIONS (Selected)
Books
At the Edges of Sleep: Moving Images and Somnolent Spectators (University of California Press, 2022)
• Shortlisted for the 2023 Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards
• Finalist for the 2023 Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present Book Prize
• Finalist for the 2025 American Council of Learned Societies Open Access Book Prize
• Open-source digital edition available at https://www.ucpress.edu/books/at-the-edges-of-sleep/epub-pdf
Sounding the Modern Woman: The Songstress in Chinese Cinema (Duke University Press, 2015)
Melancholy Drift: Marking Time in Chinese Cinema (Hong Kong University Press, 2010)
Still Moving: Between Cinema and Photography, coedited with Karen Beckman (Duke
University Press, 2008)
Articles
“Special Focus: Hong Kong Cinephilia Reimagined,” an edited special feature of Film Quarterly 78:3 (Spring 2025) (as commissioning editor)
• Available at https://online.ucpress.edu/fq/issue/78/3
“Arts of Healing: Tsai Ming-liang’s Days,” Film Quarterly 75.4 (Summer 2022)
“Sleeping in the Cinema,” October 176 (Spring 2021)
“Deep in the Cave,” in Deep Mediations: Thinking Space in Cinema and Digital Cultures, edited by Karen Redrobe and Jeff Scheible (University of Minnesota Press, 2021)
“Flowers of Shanghai: Inside the Dream,” liner essay for Flowers of Shanghai (New York: The Criterion Collection, 2021)
• Available at https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/7395-flowers-of-shanghai-inside-the-dream
“Peace and Love, True and False: Agnès Varda in Los Angeles,” in On Women’s Films: Across Generations and the World, edited by Ivone Margulies and Jeremi Szaniawski (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019)
“Circuitous Action: Revenge Cinema,” Criticism 57.1 (Winter 2015)
Interview
“At the Edges of Sleep: A Conversation with Jean Ma,” Bruno Guaraná, Film Quarterly 76.2 (Winter 2022)
Professional Experience
From 2006 to 2023, Jean Ma taught at Stanford University, where she was the Victoria and Roger Sant Professor in Art and the Denning Family Director of the Stanford Arts Institute. From 2003 to 2006, she was an Assistant Professor of Film and Electronic Arts at Bard College.