Coming soon: Affective Bodies

Documenting Crypto Extraction: Two Parallel Documentaries on Bitcoin Mining in Texas

Through an immersive virtual reality experience, this project explores how crypto extraction reshapes communities and landscapes, drawing on knowledge in the fields of anthropology, science and technology studies, documentary production, and virtual reality. This research is a part of Lyu’s undergraduate honors thesis project at Cornell University.

Collective Memory and National Identity under Soviet Censorship in Sergei Parajanov’s The Color of Pomegranates

Sauna Space as Heterotopia: Nature, Bodily Landscape, and Trauma Healing in Smoke Sauna Sisterhood

A critical analysis of Anna Hint’s 2023 film Smoke Sauna Sisterhood. I argue that the smoke sauna exists as a heterotopia (to use Michel Foucault’s term), distinct from mainstream society through the examination of the surrounding nature, the portrayal of the female body as a unique landscape, and the sense of temporal displacement experienced during the process of healing from trauma.

Gender Discourses Influencing Chinese Leftover Women: Marriage delays, gender discourses, and identity constructions

Anthropological and ethnographic research on Chinese leftover women, with focuses on gender discourses, and the identities of leftover women (da ling sheng nu) in China. Fieldwork conducted in Shanghai, China. The fieldwork and research were conducted in 2020.