Denise Khor
Associate Professor, Northeastern University
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Denise Khor is an associate professor of Asian American studies and visual studies at Northeastern University where she is jointly appointed in the Department of Cultures, Societies and Global Studies and the Department of Art + Design. Her research specializations include film and media history, early cinema, nontheatrical film, critical ethnic studies, and Asian American film and media. She is the author of Transpacific Convergences: Race, Migration and Japanese American Film Culture before World War II (UNC Press, 2022), which explores the historical experiences of Japanese Americans at the cinema and traces an alternative network of film production, circulation, and exhibition. Her most recent work on 16mm amateur film production and camera clubs by Japanese Americans appears in Sixteen at 100: Histories of a Radical Film Format, eds. Gregory A. Waller and Haidee Wasson (Oxford UP, 2025). Currently, she is working on her next book project The Invisible Hand: Asian Americans and the U.S. Animation Industry.
Chinese Americans in Classical Hollywood: Anna May Wong, Tyrus Wong, and the Extras of L.A Chinatown
This panel focuses on the contributions of Chinese American performers in Classical Hollywood, examining the complex interplay of racial representation, labor activism, and artistic achievement that shaped Chinese Americans presence in the film industry between the 1930s and the 1960s. William Gow’s presentation investigates the impact of MGM's 1937 film The Good Earth on labor conditions for Chinese American extras, highlighting the successful efforts of Chinese American background players to secure formal representation within Hollywood's Central Casting hiring system. Karen Fang delves into the career of Tyrus Wong, tracing his journey from immigrant artist to influential figure in animation and visual arts, while exploring the methodological challenges of reconstructing Asian American histories. Katie Gee Salisbury examines the life and career of Anna May Wong, Hollywood's first Asian American movie star, focusing on her struggles against typecasting and her efforts to reshape Asian American representation in film. Together, we offer a nuanced perspective on the long history of Chinese American engagement with American cinema, addressing the role that Chinese Americans played in negotiating issues of labor, art, and racial identity in Hollywood in the early to mid-twentieth century.
Archive, Re-assemblage, Curation: Asian American Film at 100
Catalyzed by civil rights movements, the emergence of Asian American filmmaking has been characterized by a pioneer generation from the post-1968 era and subsequent establishment of media organizations like VC and ACV. This roundtable revisits this foundational history in defining the categories of Asian American film. In conversation with Film Quarterly’s 2020 dossier “Asian American Film at 50,” our participants discuss possibilities of charting new methodological approaches for the study of Asian American media. We invite scholars to rethink Asian American film history across media, locality, and periodization. Looking beyond stardom, Melissa Phruksachart discusses the history of craft and industry struggle in Hollywood’s “archives of embarrassment.” Yiman Wang and Daisuke Miyao reframe Asian American film history across global scales. Wang considers un-seen labor and the circulation of diasporic Chinese entertainment workers across multi-sited film industries, while Miyao explores development of early film techniques and technology by Japanese Americans working between US and Japan. Focused on politics of film preservation, Denise Khor and Ashley Dequilla consider the materiality of film for writing new historiographies. Khor reflects on lost films, archival rediscoveries, and “feminist media archive critique” for interventions in Asian American film history. Dequilla discusses recovering over 300 16mm home movies that depict the Filipino diaspora in Chicago, 5 of which received the 2024 National Film Preservation Foundation Award. What tantalizing possibilities emerge across new approaches to archives and curation? Brian Hu rethinks the possibilities of the “Asian American film festival,” what it can do, and who it can be for.
Denise Khor
Associate Professor, Northeastern University
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