Kristine is a historian of modern China and an Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies, SUNY New Paltz. Her research focus on film, media, visual culture, and gender studies. After graduating from Wellesley in 1986 with a double major in Chinese and English, she went on to earn her Ph.D. at Columbia University in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, along with an additional certificate in Modern China specialization from Columbia's East Asian Institute in the School of International and Public Affairs. Since 1996, Kristine has been teaching at the State University of New York, New Paltz, in the Hudson Valley. Currently Deputy Chair of the Department of History, she also oversaw the expansion of the college's interdisciplinary Asian Studies Program, serving as its director for a dozen years and establishing a major in Asian Studies as well as a Living-Learning Community for students from Asia and studying Asian languages. Kristine has also served twice as Visiting Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago.
Her publications have appeared in the Harvard New Literary History of Modern China, the Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas, History in Images: Pictures and Public Space in Modern China, and The New Woman International: Representations in Photography and Film from the 1870s through the 1960s, among others. Currently her research explores women's mobility in Chinese film culture from the 1910s through the 1970s.
Kristine remembers fondly studying with Mrs. Lin, who instilled an appreciation for both traditional and simplified characters, ignited students' interest in reading The Analects and poetry in classical Chinese, and deepened our understanding of historic sites and artifacts in and around Beijing during the summer 1984 Wellesley-CET language program.