Wang Xinran 王欣然

Educational:
B.A., English Literature, Translation and Interpretation, China Foreign Affairs University
M.A., Critical Asian Humanities, Duke University

Research interests:
Food; gender; affect theory; cultural studies

Self-Introduction:
Cinnamoroll stan; Class II marathon runner; back-to-back winner of Duke University’s MasterChef Competition (2018-2020).

Thesis Advisor: Dr Tu Hang, A/P Xu Lanjun

Thesis Title: Culinary Affections: Feminine Appetites in Contemporary Chinese Popular Culture

Thesis Research Area:
What can food tell us about who we are, how we love, and how we survive? My dissertation explores how food in contemporary Chinese popular culture becomes a charged site of affective experience, gender negotiation, and identity formation. Across popular novels, films, and short videos, food emerges as both intimate and unsettling: the comfort of a family recipe, the violence of disordered eating, the strangeness of culinary failure. These depictions reveal how affects such as disgust, shame, nostalgia, and tenderness infuse acts of eating, cooking, or refusal, complicating conventional notions of femininity, care, and resistance. Drawing on feminist affect theory, especially reparative reading, I show how these depictions of food negotiate trauma and loss while also opening space for imagination and renewal. At its core, this project is about rethinking what it means to know and be a woman in contemporary China, and about seeing in the ordinary gestures of eating and feeding the possibility of alternative ways of living.