Research

As a graduate student at Harvard and Stanford, I was lucky enough to study subjects that were both fun and fascinating. At Harvard, I earned my M.A. in Regional Studies—East Asia, and wrote my master’s thesis on the cultural meanings of Chinese cookbooks in America. Later, that research was turned into my first-year paper at Stanford, where I went through part of a Ph.D. program in Cultural and Social Anthropology. At Stanford, my research focused on popular culture and particularly the culture of online fandom. To that end, I researched The X-Files, one of the earliest television shows to develop a dedicated online fan base.

The following research projects are the results of this graduate work. Except for “Dana Scully Uncovered,” which was built as a website, these are written in an academic (i.e., sometimes hard to understand) style, although I tried to be as clear as possible.

Building the X-Files: Television Production, Authorship, and Discourse

In the summer of 2001, funded by a Mellon Foundation grant, I spent two months in Los Angeles conducting fieldwork on the entertainment industry. In addition to interviewing numerous screenwriters and producers, I spent one week at the offices of 1013 Productions, the production company behind The X-Files. I observed the filming of an episode, sat in on production meetings, and interviewed the executive producers. This paper is the result of that research.

“Authentic” Chinese Food: Chinese American Cookbooks and the Regulation of Ethnic Identity

This paper is a revised version of my Harvard University master’s thesis in Regional Studies-East Asia (2000), and was written while I was a Ph.D. student in Stanford University’s Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology. It was delivered as a paper at the Association for Asian American Studies conference in March 2001.

Dana Scully Uncovered: X-Files Fan Fiction and the Posthuman Body

This project, which explores the world of X-Files fan fiction (fiction written by fans of the television show using the characters and situations of the show), was originally built as a website for the Stanford University course “Bodyworks” during the winter quarter of 2000-01. The site was later revised into a paper format and delivered as a paper presentation at the Society for Literature and Science in October 2001.