Rijuta Vallishayee

PhD Student

East Asia: China


Bio

I am a first-year PhD student in the Department of History at the University of California, Berkeley. I earned my bachelor's degree from Rice University, where I studied drama, film, and television as a site of state involvement in late imperial, modern, and contemporary China. I am broadly interested in nineteenth- and twentieth-century East Asia with specific interests in late-Qing and Republican China. In the past, I have written on contemporary Chinese culture and regulatory practices, the Second World War in East and Southeast Asia, as well as Qing-era governance of performing arts. My research interests include cultural production, governance, ethnicity, and gender. 

Publications 

“Censorship through the Eyes of the Censors: The Cases of Story of Yanxi Palace and Ruyi’s Royal Love in the Palace.” Rice Asian Studies Review 6 (2023): 33-43. https://rasr.rice.edu/RASR%20VOL%206%20FINAL%20VERSION.pdf.

“Towards Glorious Development: China’s TV Drama Regulations & the Capitalist Transition, 1986-2015.” Chuang, September 2022. https://chuangcn.org/2022/09/towards-glorious-development/.

With Tessa Delgo. Rice and Revolution: The Great Famine of Vietnam during World War II, 1944-45. San Francisco: Pacific Atrocities Education, 2021.

Contagions of Empire: Scientific Racism, Sexuality, and Black Military Workers Abroad, 1894–1948.” Journal of Southern History 87, no. 4 (November 2021): 762-763 (book review).

Shusenjo and the Humanity of History.” positionspolitics: paideia 1 (Spring 2021). https://positionspolitics.org/shusenjo-and-the-humanity-of-history/.

Presentations 


2023 Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Southeast Regional Undergraduate Conference
Paper: “Understanding Qing Cultural Governance: Manchu Ethnicity and Opera Prohibitions, 1647-1912.”


2022 Rice Undergraduate Research Symposium
Paper: “Censorship Through the Eyes of the Censors: The Cases of Story of Yanxi Palace and Ruyi’s Royal Love in the Palace.”


2022 Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Southeast Regional Undergraduate Conference
Paper: “Scarlet Heart: Elucidating the Historiographical “Main Melody” of the State Administration of Film, Radio, and Television (SARFT).”


2022 O'Brien Undergraduate Conference in Medieval and Early Modern Studies s
Paper: “Building Borderlands: The Mongol Empire in the Eyes of Europe and the Southern Song, 1221-1255.”

Honors 

2024 Ira and Patricia Gruber Prize for Best Honors Thesis, Rice University

2024 Best Oral Presentation, Humanities Research and Creative Work Showcase, Rice University

2023 Suzie Smith Vandiver Prize, Rice University

2023 Outstanding Oral Presentation, Rice Undergraduate Research Symposium

2022 O’Brien Medieval and Early Modern Studies Undergraduate Award

Fellowships 

Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (2022-2024)

Elizabeth Lee Moody Undergraduate Research Fellowship in the Humanities and the Arts (2021-2024)

Education

 Bachelor of Arts in History and Transnational Asian Studies with Honors, Rice University (Summa cum laude) (2024)