Rate My Professor Andy Rodekohr

Andy Rodekohr serves as Department Chair and Associate Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Wake Forest University, a position he has held since joining the faculty in 2012. He holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Georgia (1999), an M.A. in Modern Chinese Literature from Columbia University (2004), and a Ph.D. in Modern Chinese Literature from Harvard University (2012). His doctoral dissertation, "Conjuring the Masses: The Figure of the Crowd in Modern Chinese Literature and Visual Culture," argues that crowd representations in literature and visual media played a crucial role in constructing modern China's cultural, political, and historical values. From Lu Xun's encounters with crowd imagery to Zhang Yimou's Olympic spectacles, the work highlights how crowds function beyond mere symbols of the nation, involving ongoing negotiations of collective identity through themes like public warnings, superfluity, massification via violence, and technological exhibition.

Rodekohr's research centers on Chinese-language literature, film, and popular media, encompassing representations of crowds and masses in modern Chinese literature and visual culture, the emergence of cinematic new waves in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China, the musical, cultural, and technological legacies of pop singer Teresa Teng, and the globalization of Chinese martial arts. His current book project, tentatively titled "Crowd Spectacular: Conjuring the Masses in Modern China," foregrounds crowd images as a pivotal mode of cultural production tied to ideological mass politics. Key publications include the chapter "Conjuring the Masses: The Spectral/Spectacular Crowd in Chinese Film" in The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas (2013), "The Global Spectacle of Netflix’s 3 Body Problem" in China Currents (2024, Vol. 23, No. 1), a review of Tie Xiao's The Crowd in Modern China (2019), and translations such as Chen Pingyuan's "Enchantment with the Voice" in A New Literary History of Modern China (2017). Rodekohr is Senior At-Large Member of the Southeast Conference of the Asian Studies Association (SEC-AAS) Executive Committee for 2026, co-hosted the 2024 SEC-AAS annual meeting at Wake Forest, and affiliates with the Film & Media Studies program and Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities Center.