{"id":172,"date":"2019-08-06T09:56:31","date_gmt":"2019-08-06T09:56:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.complit.hku.hk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/trzcacak.rs-side-profile-png-244905-1.png"},"modified":"2026-07-17T03:21:31","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T03:21:31","slug":"trzcacak-rs-side-profile-png-244905-2","status":"inherit","type":"attachment","link":"https:\/\/complit.hku.hk\/index.php\/faculty\/trzcacak-rs-side-profile-png-244905-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Professor Jean Ma"},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"class_list":["post-172","attachment","type-attachment","status-inherit","hentry"],"description":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Prof. Jean Ma
\nPhD, University of Chicago
\nBA, University of California, Berkeley
\nMr. and Mrs. Hung Hing-Ying Professor in the Arts
\nAssociate Vice-President (Faculty Affairs)
\nemail: jeanma@hku.hk<\/p>\n

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<\/em>; Sounding the Modern Woman: The Songstress in Chinese Cinema<\/em>; Still Moving: Between Cinema and Photography<\/em>; and At the Edges of Sleep: Moving Image and Somnolent Spectators<\/em>. Her work has appeared in the journals Grey Room<\/em>, October, Camera Obscura<\/em>, Film Quarterly<\/em>, Criticism<\/em>, Journal of Chinese Cinemas<\/em>, and numerous edited volumes. She serves on the editorial board of Film Quarterly<\/em> and is an coeditor of the book series California Studies in Music, Sound, and Media<\/em> at the University of California Press. For more of her writing, see jeanma.xyz<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A note for prospective PhDs: I am unable to reply to individual queries about graduate supervision because of the volume of messages received. I will review applications on November 18. Applications uploaded to the university portal after this date will not receive consideration.<\/p>\n

RESEARCH INTERESTS<\/strong>
\n\u2022\tfilm and media history and theory
\n\u2022\tgender and sexuality studies
\n\u2022\tsound studies
\n\u2022\tmoving image art<\/p>\n

PUBLICATIONS (Selected)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Books<\/strong>
\nAt the Edges of Sleep: Moving Images and Somnolent Spectators<\/em> (University of California Press, 2022)
\n\u2022\tShortlisted for the 2023 Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards
\n\u2022\tFinalist for the 2023 Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present Book Prize
\n\u2022\tFinalist for the 2025 American Council of Learned Societies Open Access Book Prize
\n\u2022\tOpen-source digital edition available at https:\/\/www.ucpress.edu\/books\/at-the-edges-of-sleep\/epub-pdf <\/p>\n

Sounding the Modern Woman: The Songstress in Chinese Cinema<\/em> (Duke University Press, 2015)<\/p>\n

Melancholy Drift: Marking Time in Chinese Cinema<\/em> (Hong Kong University Press, 2010)<\/p>\n

Still Moving: Between Cinema and Photography<\/em>, coedited with Karen Beckman (Duke
\nUniversity Press, 2008)<\/p>\n

Articles<\/strong>
\n\u201cSpecial Focus: Hong Kong Cinephilia Reimagined,\u201d an edited special feature of Film Quarterly<\/em> 78:3 (Spring 2025) (as commissioning editor)
\n\u2022\tAvailable at https:\/\/online.ucpress.edu\/fq\/issue\/78\/3
\n\u201cArts of Healing: Tsai Ming-liang\u2019s Days,\u201d Film Quarterly<\/em> 75.4 (Summer 2022)
\n\u201cSleeping in the Cinema,\u201d October<\/em> 176 (Spring 2021)
\n\u201cDeep in the Cave,\u201d in Deep Mediations: Thinking Space in Cinema and Digital Cultures<\/em>, edited by Karen Redrobe and Jeff Scheible (University of Minnesota Press, 2021)
\n\u201cFlowers of Shanghai<\/em>: Inside the Dream,\u201d liner essay for Flowers of Shanghai<\/em> (New York: The Criterion Collection, 2021)
\n\u2022\tAvailable at https:\/\/www.criterion.com\/current\/posts\/7395-flowers-of-shanghai-inside-the-dream
\n\u201cPeace and Love, True and False: Agn\u00e8s Varda in Los Angeles,\u201d in On Women\u2019s Films: Across Generations and the World<\/em>, edited by Ivone Margulies and Jeremi Szaniawski (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019)
\n\u201cCircuitous Action: Revenge Cinema,\u201d Criticism<\/em> 57.1 (Winter 2015)<\/p>\n

Interview
\n\u201cAt the Edges of Sleep<\/em>: A Conversation with Jean Ma,\u201d Bruno Guaran\u00e1, Film Quarterly<\/em> 76.2 (Winter 2022)<\/p>\n

Professional Experience
\nFrom 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.<\/p>\n"},"caption":{"rendered":"

Professor Jean Ma<\/p>\n"},"alt_text":"","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image\/png","media_details":{"width":785,"height":785,"file":"2019\/08\/trzcacak.rs-side-profile-png-244905-1.png","sizes":{"thumbnail":{"file":"trzcacak.rs-side-profile-png-244905-1-150x150.png","width":150,"height":150,"mime_type":"image\/png","source_url":"https:\/\/complit.hku.hk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/trzcacak.rs-side-profile-png-244905-1-150x150.png"},"medium":{"file":"trzcacak.rs-side-profile-png-244905-1-300x300.png","width":300,"height":300,"mime_type":"image\/png","source_url":"https:\/\/complit.hku.hk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/trzcacak.rs-side-profile-png-244905-1-300x300.png"},"medium_large":{"file":"trzcacak.rs-side-profile-png-244905-1-768x768.png","width":768,"height":768,"mime_type":"image\/png","source_url":"https:\/\/complit.hku.hk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/trzcacak.rs-side-profile-png-244905-1-768x768.png"},"twentyseventeen-thumbnail-avatar":{"file":"trzcacak.rs-side-profile-png-244905-1-100x100.png","width":100,"height":100,"mime_type":"image\/png","source_url":"https:\/\/complit.hku.hk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/trzcacak.rs-side-profile-png-244905-1-100x100.png"},"full":{"file":"trzcacak.rs-side-profile-png-244905-1.png","width":785,"height":785,"mime_type":"image\/png","source_url":"https:\/\/complit.hku.hk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/trzcacak.rs-side-profile-png-244905-1.png"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0","keywords":[]}},"post":96,"source_url":"https:\/\/complit.hku.hk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/trzcacak.rs-side-profile-png-244905-1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/complit.hku.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/complit.hku.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/complit.hku.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/complit.hku.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/complit.hku.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172"}]}}