Dr. Ruoyun Bai

Biography

Ruoyun Bai received a Ph.D. in Communications from the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois in 2007. His research interests focus on Chinese media and popular culture in the context of China's integration into global capitalism. His research agenda is driven by a long-standing concern with the political implications of the phenomenal growth of popular media, particularly television and new media, in post-socialist China. Bai's forthcoming book, 'Corruption Dramas in a Disjunctive Media Order: Contemporary China' (UBC Press), interrogates the changing discourses of corruption in Chinese television drama serials from the mid-1990s to the 2010s, and locates the source of these changes in the disjunctive nature of state-controlled and highly commercialized Chinese media. In addition to his forthcoming book, he has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and anthologies, and has co-edited books, with one forthcoming. Currently, he is conducting research for a single-author book project titled 'Media Scandals in China'. Professor Bai teaches undergraduate courses in Media Studies and Global Asia Studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC), including MDSB06 Media Globalization, MDSC01 Theories and Methods of Media Studies, GASC40 Chinese Media and Politics, and GASC41 Media and Popular Culture in East Asia. He is also involved in graduate teaching and supervision, and is affiliated with the Centre for Comparative Literature (primary) and the Cinema Studies Institute (secondary), as well as being an affiliated faculty member of the Asian Institute.

Research Interests

Courses