Dr. Jiacheng Liu

About

Jiacheng Liu is Assistant Professor of Media Studies in the Department of Communication & Film at the University of Memphis. Their research centers a transnational approach to trans and queer cultures, media, and performance, with a particular focus on China and Asian diasporas.

Drawing on trans and queer of color critique, Sinophone and transpacific studies, and media and performance theory, Liu examines how Chinese and Asian diasporic trans and queer people employ various cultural forms to navigate, articulate, and assert their positions within and against multiple empires, including authoritarian China and imperial America.

Their work has appeared in or is forthcoming in GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Sexualities, Feminist Media Studies, and the International Journal of Cultural Studies.

Education

PhD in Mass Communications & Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
The Pennsylvania State University

Selected Publications

Liu, Jiacheng. Forthcoming. “Chinese Queens Voguing Femme: Minor Transnationalism of Transfemininity in China’s Ballroom Scene.” GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies.

Liu, Jiacheng. 2025. “Disposable Counterpublics: Women, Queers, and Uyghurs in the White Paper Movement.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 28 (6): 1041–61.

Liu, Jiacheng, and Weishan Miao. 2025. “Platformized Production of Homonationalism: An Ethnography of Queer Media Production in China.” Sexualities 28 (7): 2140–58.

Liu, Jiacheng. 2023. “Empathy as Exoneration or Resistance? The Politics of Male Empathy in the Chinese #MeToo Movement.” Feminist Media Studies 23 (2): 588–605.

Miao, Weishan, Jiacheng Liu, and Shangwei Wu. 2022. “Embedded Symbiosis: An Institutional Approach to Government-Business Relationship in the Chinese Internet Industry.” Information, Communication & Society 25 (16): 2447–64.

Zhao, Longxuan, Jiacheng Liu, and Zhanghao Li. 2022. “Online Dating Beyond Dating Apps: An Examination of Self-Presentation of Chinese Gay Men Dating on Zhihu.” International Journal of Communication 16: 2220–38.