Bunker Urbanism: Ruinated Futures from the Underground by Shiqi Lin

The first one traces how global popular music flows such as disco, hip hop, and bubblegum pop crossed the Iron Curtain and entered the Chinese mediascapes from the 1980s to the 2000s. Remapping a history of media technological changes and geopolitical crossings, this project reflects on how imaginations of belonging and globality were shaped and conditioned from the dusk of the Cold War to the height of neoliberal globalization. Another project, Ruinated Futurity, studies the media afterlives of industrial ruins across the transcultural landscapes of Rust Belt America, post-Cold War Europe, and post-socialist China.

This project thinks intimately with the lived experiences of diverse social agents from techno ravers to laid-off workers. In the context of contemporary global economic recession and political precarity, it tells stories of dignity, creative agency, and interconnectedness from post-industrial heartlands as sources of struggle and audacity for the making of alternative futures. I received my B.A. at Vassar College and my Ph.D. at the University of California, Irvine.

My own educational experiences in both a small liberal arts college and a big public university have shaped my strong belief in meaningful student-teacher relationships and motivated me to support my students to engage with the world with wonder, care, and imaginations of better futures. In 2023-26, I was a Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University, where I was actively involved in conversations about Asia, media, theory, and transcultural comparison.