Date of Award
Summer 8-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Film Studies
First Advisor
Emily Carman
Second Advisor
Nam Lee
Third Advisor
Stephanie Takaragawa
Abstract
This article asks the following questions: First, whether or not Kwan, and her qipaos, created new stereotypes of Asian women, or whether they, in fact, customarily represented within restricted versions of Asian femininity already available within mainstream, dominant Western culture of early 1960s Hollywood films. That is, this article seeks to investigate why Kwan, and her qipaos, in fact, became so culturally productive at that moment of historical time. Second, this article further seeks to explore the ways in which the qipao continued to enable Nancy Kwan to represent to mainstream Western, Hollywood-based audiences, uniquely, greatly, or importantly different versions of Asian femininity that would otherwise have been unavailable to them. Further, this article seeks to explore how her visibility was possible only through the racialized and gendered conventions of presentation and meaning of the body already in existence.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Yang, Jing. "Tailoring the Stereotype of Asian Femininity: Nancy Kwan, the Qipao, and 1960s Hollywood." Master's thesis, Chapman University, 2026. https://doi.org/10.36837/chapman.000761