Shaowen’s research focuses on modern Chinese visual studies, film, and media. Her dissertation investigates the social, political, visual, and media-industrial legacy of color from China’s socialist period to the late 1980s, tracing a chromatic historiography of aesthetics, politics and science alongside mediated memories and national construction. Broader fields of interest include East Asian film history, Cold War visual culture, Sino-Russo intellectual exchange, and socialist/post-socialist art and literature. In addition to a few curation projects, she has also written articles and reviews for: Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Trans Asia Photography, Critical Inquiry and European Journal of East Asian Studies.