Bio


Eldon Pei joined PWR as a postdoctoral fellow in 2018. He holds a PhD in art history from Stanford University and has lectured on cinema and contemporary art at Stanford, University of California, Santa Cruz, San Francisco State University, and St. Mary's College of Moraga.

Originally a "third-culture kid" from New Jersey, Eldon studied literary arts at Brown University and spent a year as an itinerant fiction writer in China before settling into an initial ten-year career as an equities research analyst and investment banker based in Hong Kong (and sometimes also Taiwan... and China... and Korea... and Singapore...). In 2010, he returned to the United States for graduate school and now lives with his spouse and daughter in Santa Clara.

Reflecting Eldon's scholarly interests in transnational cinema and visual culture, and drawing inspiration from his varied educational and professional experiences, Eldon's PWR 1 class, "Writing about Why Movies Matter," introduces first-year students to the fascination of expanding one's intellectual horizons by engaging closely with moving images through writing and research.

Academic Appointments


  • Lecturer, Writing and Rhetoric Studies

Current Research and Scholarly Interests


Specialisation: world cinema; documentary film; post-war visual cultures; East and Southeast Asian studies; propaganda; media, technology and society; critical theory; postcolonialism