Tian (Esther) Li teaches courses in film, media, cultural studies, and creative project planning. Before joining Korea University, she taught in the Program of Film and Media Studies at Yale University, where she was also a lecturer in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures and a Postdoctoral Associate at the Council on East Asian Studies. Previously, she was a lecturer and Korea Foundation–Korea Institute Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University, as well as a lecturer teaching Asian Screen Cultures at Stanford University. She is the recipient of a Korea Foundation Fellowship and the ACLS Yvette and William Kirby Centennial Award in Chinese Studies. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine. Her academic work has appeared in journals including positions: asia critique, Telos, The Journal of Asian Studies, China Perspectives, and Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies.

Tian Li’s research examines how human relations both shape and are (re)shaped by media and culture. Her substantive research interests include film, media, cultural studies, critical theory, and gender politics, with a regional focus on East Asia.

“Pain, Suffering, and Justice: Transnational Narratives of Comfort Women in Twenty-Two and Spirit&aposs Homecoming,” In Private Memories, Public Discourses. The Traces of the Perpetration in Spaces, Testimonies and Archives (Peter Lang, 2025)

“Opening a Virtual Space Before the Door of the Law: The Dogani Effect from Silenced to Angels Wear White,” positions: asia critique 32, no.3 (2024): 685-711.
 “Rhizome in the shadows: Transplantation of Korean Running Man in the rise of Screen-capitalism,” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies no. 34 (2020):73-87. https://doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2019.1694139
  
“Bang Bang Bang—Nonsense or an Alternative Language?: The Lingualscape in the Chinese Remake of I Am a Singer,” China Perspectives no.3 (2019): 37-45. https://doi.org/10.4000/chinaperspectives.9417
« Bang Bang Bang » – Absurdité ou langue alternative ? Le paysage linguistique de l’adaptation chinoise/du remake chinois de I Am a Singer (French Version)   http://journals.openedition.org/perspectiveschinoises/10327
“Running Man: Korean Television Variety Program on the Transnational, Affective Run,” Telos no.184 (2018): 163-184. (coauthor with Kyung Hyun Kim) https://doi.org/10.3817/0918184163
How Korea Quietly Reshaped Chinese Pop Culture, Sixth Tone: Fresh Voices from Today’s China, July 19, 2023. 

She is currently working on two book projects: Riding the Korean Wave in China:  The Reception and Remaking of Popular Korean Screen Culture and Overcoming Modern Subjectivity: Media-ted Justice, Law, and Ethics in Korean Legal Films and K-Dramas.

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=uAPHqssAAAAJ&hl=ko&oi=sra