Richard Davis

He is a film and media scholar who works on cinematic crossings between Japan, East Asia, and the United States. His first monograph, Sing Your Way to Heaven, describes the collisions between aesthetics, ideology, and pleasure in musical films produced in Imperial Japan during the so-called Fifteen Years’ War (1931-45). Two articles from this project have been published: Imaginary Conquests: Folktales, Film, and the Japanese Empire in Asia (Ex-Position 42), and Whose Blue Heaven? Musicality in the Early Japanese Talkies (The Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema 10/1). Additional research and teaching interests include international film history, East Asian modernities, animation, and film theory.

Davis has a joint Ph.D. in East Asian languages and civilizations and cinema and media studies from the University of Chicago. Before joining Duke Kunshan, he spent two years teaching in the Humanities and Social Sciences Core at Singapore Management University, and before that, three years in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Tsinghua University.

Richard Davis是一位电影与媒体学者，研究日本、东亚与美国之间的电影文化交汇。他的首部专著《Sing Your Way to Heaven》（《歌唱通往天堂之路》）探讨了“十五年战争”（1931-1945）期间日本帝国制作的音乐电影中美学、意识形态与娱乐性之间的碰撞。这一研究项目中已有两篇文章发表，分别是《Imaginary Conquests: Folktales, Film, and the Japanese Empire in Asia》（《想象的征服：民间故事、电影与日本帝国在亚洲的扩张》，刊登于Ex-Position第42期）及《Whose Blue Heaven? Musicality in the Early Japanese Talkies》（《谁的蓝色天堂？早期日本有声电影中的音乐性》，刊登于The Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema第10卷第1期）。他的其他研究和教学兴趣包括国际电影史、东亚现代性、动画与电影理论。

他在芝加哥大学取得东亚语言与文明、电影与媒体研究双博士学位。在加入昆山杜克大学前，他曾在新加坡管理大学教授人文与社会科学核心课程两年，此前还在清华大学外语系任教三年。