Shaoqian Zhang, PhD
Associate Professor
Shaoqian Zhang is an art historian specializing in East Asian art and architecture, and teaches courses in Chinese and Japanese art and architectural history at OSU. She received her BA in traditional Chinese architecture from Beijing University, and MA and PhD in art history from Northwestern University.
Shaoqian Zhang received the 2017 Oklahoma State University College of Arts and Sciences Junior Faculty Award for Scholarly Excellence.
With the primary focus on early twentieth-century Chinese art and architecture, Zhang’s research nevertheless touches upon a wide variety of visual culture materials ranging from traditional East Asian architecture to contemporary art in China. She is currently working on her book manuscript, The Frontlines of Visual Conquest: War, Party-State and Propaganda in Modern Chinese Print Art. It examines the evolution of Chinese political prints from the end of the Nineteenth Century to the foundation of People’s Republic of China in 1949, with an in-depth discussion on the often-overlooked Japanese influence on Chinese print and graphic design.
Zhang also has published a number of articles that reflect her interests in print culture, military history, party-state, medium specificity and spectatorship in China’s modern period, appearing in journals such as Modern Art Asia, Transcultural Studies, Twentieth Century Chinaand Art in Print. She is the author of “Political Art and Posters” in Oxford Bibliographies of Chinese Studies. She is currently working on an article on the visual reeducation for the Japanese prisoners in China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, her other interests include the relationship between architectural representation and different religious forces in East Asia; body politics in visual presentation in modern China and contemporary Chinese art by female artists, resulting in publications in journals such as Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, Architext and others.
In addition to writing and research, Zhang has also maintained an active curatorial practice role since beginning her career at OSU. She has curated several shows in both China and United States, and her exhibitions were supported by awards from the Oklahoma Humanities Council, National Endowment for Humanities and the China National Arts Fund. She has also published several exhibition catalogs, exhibition reviews and art pedagogy essays.
Selected Publications:
- “Spatial Strategies of the Grid: A Comparative Study of Urban Planning in Traditional
China and the American West.” Architext’ s Special Issue “The Urban Grid in Planning and Architectural Cultures: From Global
South to North and Back Again” (accepted)
- “Political Art and Posters.” In Oxford Bibliographies in Chinese Studies. Ed. Tim Wright. New York: Oxford University Press (forthcoming).
- “Reshaping the New Woman: The Dilemma of Shen in Modern China,” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy (No. 2, 2018 Volume 17): forthcoming.
- “The Making of Peace and War in China: From New Year Pictures to Propaganda Cartoons
during the Second Sino-Japanese War,” Book Chapter in Comic Empires: The Imperialism of Cartoons, Caricature, and Satirical Art. Eds. Richard Scully and Andrekos Varnava (forthcoming, University of Manchester
Press, 2018).
- “Dark and Bright Art: Woodcuts in the Aftermath of War,” Art in Print (Special Issue on Art and Traumatic History) (Jan-Feb 2017): 20-23.
- "Visualizing the Modern Chinese Party-State: from Political Education to Propaganda
Agitation in the Early Republican Period,"in Twentieth Century China (Jan 2016): 52-80.
- "Combat and Collaboration: The Clash of Propaganda Prints between the Chinese Guomindang
and the Japanese Empire in the 1930s–1940s"in Transcultural Studies 1 (June 2014): 95-133.
- “The Supremacy of Modern Time: How Shanghai Calendars Re-shaped the Image of China (1860-1930)” in Modern Art Asia Selected Research Papers (Cambridge, UK: Enzo Arts and Publishing Limited, June 2012): 133-152.