Each week since the start of the semester we've been highlighting Bryn Mawr's newest faculty members. The College supports faculty excellence in both research and teaching and is committed to social justice and inclusion in the classroom and in the community at large.
Qinna Shen
Department of German
My research interests concentrate on the areas of German Studies (20th century), Film Studies, and Transnational Studies with a focus on German-Asian cultural relations. I have co-edited Beyond Alterity: German Encounters with Modern East Asia (Berghahn, 2014). My monograph entitled The Politics of Magic: DEFA Fairy-Tale Films (Wayne State UP, 2015) is the first comprehensive, critical, book-length treatment of the live-action fairy-tale films from former East Germany. My next book project is tentatively titled Raising the "Bamboo Curtain": Film Exchange between China and Divided Germany. It will focus primarily on international film trade, genres, cultural politics, censorship, reception, as well as on German-Chinese co-productions.
Sylvia Houghteling
History of Art
My research focuses on textiles from the early modern period with a particular interest in exchanges between South Asia, Europe and Islamic lands. I study the interconnections between early modern courtly cultures, the cosmopolitanism of provincial centers, and the active role of textiles in the pageantry and politics of everyday life. Although I am an art historian, I also try to draw upon the interdisciplinary meanings of textiles and decorative arts: their economic worth; their visual content, architectural placement and sensory value; their literary referents and ritual purposes. And as someone who became interested in art through making it, I also try to teach and learn from actual objects whenever possible and I am excited to explore with classes Bryn Mawr’s Special Collections of art and artifacts and rare books.