Yumo Yan (she/her/hers)

I am currently working on my dissertation titled "Repurposing Cinema: The Design and Making of Chinese Movie Theater Space, 1920s–1980s." My dissertation studies the histories of infrastructural transformation in Chinese movie theaters to reveal how theatrical spaces have been constantly modified to reflect and shape larger cultural, economic, and political changes throughout China’s long twentieth century. While cinema’s form and content have been traditionally thought to serve a mirroring relationship with reality, my dissertation focuses on how the material and spatial context of film exhibition and reception—theater décor, spatial planning, and in-house amenities—responded in equally evident ways to the shifting conceptions around gender and class, leisure and labor, film and theater, and politics and economics in larger Chinese society.

My recent publications include:

• Yumo Yan. “A Space for Women: Gender, Class, and Women’s Lounges in 1930s Chinese Movie Palaces.” Film History: An International Journal, issue 36, no.3, Fall 2026, 1–30:  https://doi-org.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/10.2979/fih.00028
• Yumo Yan. “Appropriating CinemaScope’s Screens: The Love of Susan (Xin Yutangchun, 1954) and Hong Kong Widescreen Cinema’s ‘Ersatz’ Beginnings in the 1950s.” Journal of Chinese Cinemas, published June 9, 2026 (online), print forthcoming:  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17508061.2026.2680856
   
• Jane M. Gaines, Junlei Yang, and Yumo Yan. “Garbo’s Queen Christina as Both Lesbian and Chinese.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video, volume 43, no.3, 2026, 477–494. https://doi.org/10.1080/10509208.2026.2647706